Sundance So Far: Women Take Center Stage in Festival Marred by Real-World Turmoil

PARK CITY, Utah — The Sundance Film Festival could not avoid the shock of the violence taking place in Minnesota in the past few days, even as the final Park City go-round of the leading gathering for independent film got underway. The movies winning attention thus far have featured strong female voices in front of and behind the camera, from a sensitive drama about a child who witnesses rape to a couple of bawdy comedies about the art world and a dinner party between two couples – one on ice, one red-hot.

But the discord between the joy of Sundance films and the outrage over ICE agents shooting dead a nurse at a protest in Minnesota pushed its way to the fore. 

“Yesterday, I was crying all afternoon,” director Petra Volpe told TheWrap on Sunday after screening her new film, “Frank & Louis,” about a friendship between two prison inmates. “You cannot normalize this and pretend it doesn’t happen. I think that we’re complicit if we do that.”

She and star Rob Morgan talked about the importance of tackling social issues in art, hoping people leave the theater changed by what they’ve seen.

These sentiments were shared by many actors and filmmakers at the festival. Natalie Portman and Olivia Wilde wore pins that read “ICE Out” at the premieres of their films, while many spoke out against the Trump administration’s actions in Minnesota and beyond.

“[It’s] absolutely devastating,” said Jenna Ortega at the premiere of her new film, “The Gallerist,” in which she stars with Natalie Portman, directed by Cathy Yan, one of the several female-directed films at the festival. 

“The lack of reprimanding against the officers is incredibly frightening and disappointing to see from our government,” Ortega said, adding, “It’s hard to be somewhere like this, and wear the nice outfits and talk about film when something so ugly is happening right next to us.”

Similarly, the filmmaker Kogonada felt compelled to address the issue on Saturday night when introducing his new film “Zi.”

“I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge everything that’s happening in Minnesota,” he said. “I’m a believer in what Roger Ebert says, that cinema is an empathizing machine. In the darkest time, you hope that art doesn’t feel indulgent and deepens our feeling and sense of humanity. So I just feel like, more than ever, it feels important to do that and to counter what’s happening around the world and create empathy, which we desperately need.”

At TheWrap’s studio on Sunday, he and actor/producer Jin Ha further elaborated.

“It is always a question about art in the face of tragedy, art in the face of political turmoil, that you really have to question what you’re making, why you’re making it and if it has validity,” Kogonada told TheWrap. “A film doesn’t have to be directly political to be legitimate in a time of unrest, but it has to be something, right?”

On Sunday, a group of anti-ICE and anti-Trump protestors took to Main Street, one of at least three demonstrations against the violence. 

Author Salman Rushdie, too, had much to say when TheWrap caught up with him in our Sundance studio.

“For the authoritarian mind, culture is the enemy,” Rushdie told TheWrap founder and editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman. “Culture in its broadest sense: universities, journalism, artists, poets, musicians. Culture itself is the enemy because culture encourages freedom. It encourages discussing things and disagreeing and arguing about things and doing new things, discarding old things. Culture encourages freedom.”

And so culture endures, especially in the independent film community, and if a trend has emerged in the first few days of 2026’s Sundance, it’s that female-focused stories are taking center stage. And also: Charli XCX is in everything.

The British dance-pop superstar was a mainstay of the first few days of Sundance, starring in three features: Gregg Araki’s campy comedy “I Want Your Sex,” Cathy Yan’s art satire “The Gallerist” and “The Moment,” an A24 mockumentary that examines the relationship between artist and brand.

The latter film most boldly announced Charli XCX as a bona fide actress, as she deftly navigated comedy and drama in playing a version of herself, offering a meta-commentary on the popularity of her “brat summer” while a faux documentary crew tries to further mold her into an evergreen commodity.

Her smaller role in “I Want Your Sex” gave space for Wilde, who plays a sex-positive artist in the boundary-pushing film about a sub/dom relationship between employer (Wilde) and employee (Cooper Hoffman). That film is careful not to villainize female ambition or sexuality, and while Wilde turns in a fine comedic performance there, it was her own directorial feature “The Invite” that elicited the biggest reaction from Sundance so far.

The chamber dramedy stars Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton and follows two couples – one on thin ice, another passionately in love – who convene for dinner. The story takes place over the course of a single evening, but Wilde as director channels “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” for an uproarious, emotional story of relationships in all their messy glory. 

In that film, too, Wilde avoids the “nagging wife” tropes, offering dimensionality for her and Cruz’s characters. The cast is more than up for the challenge, and it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility to think “The Invite” ensemble could make a mark on next year’s awards circuit. The packed Eccles audience gave a teary Wilde a roaring standing ovation in approval as the credits rolled and she took the stage with her cast.

Yan’s “The Gallerist,” a satirical comedy set in the art world starring Portman and Ortega, marks the filmmaker’s return to Sundance and indie filmmaking after directing the 2020 Warner Bros. DC blockbuster “Birds of Prey.” In an interview with TheWrap, Portman praised the festival for highlighting female filmmakers.

“Sundance has really been at the forefront of highlighting, spotlighting and celebrating female filmmakers, and continues to do so,” she said. “All the festivals should be like that, and we really shouldn’t be showing up for the ones that aren’t.”

Ortega agreed, adding that the onus is on people in power to make and release films by and starring women.

“I feel everybody’s saying, ‘We want more women in film,’ and then the people in places of power aren’t doing it, so everybody’s saving face,” she said. “It’s really wonderful to be somewhere like here where there are so many female directors, where distributors now have the opportunity to put their money where their mouth is.”

Another buzzy title was Beth de Araújo’s “Josephine,” a film that focuses on an eight-year-old girl (played by first-time actor Mason Reeves) who becomes the sole witness to a rape in Golden Gate Park. Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan co-star in de Araújo’s unflinching and deeply personal drama, cited by many critics as a standout among the festival slate. Never does the film shy away from tough conversations, as two parents try desperately to help a little girl navigate a harsh world.

“I really planted myself in who these people really are,” de Araùjo told TheWrap. “If the father said, ‘This will never, ever happen to you,’ the mother couldn’t even help but accidentally blurt out, ‘You can’t say that to her’ in what would normally be something that they discuss when Josephine is not in the room.”

Still another striking new voice emerged with the feature debut of “Bedford Park” by Stephanie Ahn, with a moving tale set in the Korean-American community of two lonely, lost individuals finding healing in a deepening friendship. Korean-Americans Audrey (Moon Choi) and Eli (Son Sukku), each wrestle with trying to assert their independence while navigating complicated family relationships.

As TheWrap critic Zachary Lee wrote: “This is a film about two people looking to be held, jagged edges and all, without cutting the people who are doing the embracing…. Ahn takes the wrestlings of the soul, the unexpressed longings, the turmoil we feel between love and obligation, and crafts them into great art.”

Only one major acquisition has taken place so far this year – Shudder picked up the horror film “Saccharine,” about a woman with an eating disorder, ahead of the festival. But as the buyers and festival insiders we spoke to for our preview story pointed out, there’s a new normal for the market. Buyers are much more deliberate in dealmaking, and the days of all-night bidding wars are long gone as negotiations can stretch out weeks and even months. 

Notably, “Saccharine” marks another film at Sundance 2026 that focuses on women in front of and behind the camera. The primary cast for the horror feature, written and directed by Natalie Erika James, is made up entirely of women. James came into TheWrap’s studio with stars Midori Francis, Madeleine Madden and Danielle Macdonald to discuss the importance of the genre’s ability to tackle social issues, particularly from a female perspective.

“I feel like it hits harder when it’s emotionally truthful in depicting that fear,” James said.

When it comes to the 2026 lineup, there’s certainly no shortage of crowdpleasing and well-reviewed films. We’ll see where they end up and if, as Ortega says, the industry can put their money where their mouth is with a bounty of female-fronted films up for sale.

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