With SXSW kicking off next week, it's time to look back at the standouts from last year. Premiering almost exactly a year ago at the 2025 South by Southwest festival, Fucktoys was one of the event's most talked-about movies. As it traveled, screening at dozens of festivals around the globe, Fucktoys got the honorary title of "the best film of 2025 with no distributor." A bittersweet label it still holds to this day. Written and directed by Annapurna Sriram, who also stars as

This year's Academy Awards is going to be an especially contentious competition, but this does not only apply to the nominated features. The 98th Oscars has quite the list of nominees in their Best Live Action Short category, namely Jane Austen's Period Drama, The Singers, and Meyer Levinson-Blount's Butcher's Stain , which tells the story of an Arab man in Israel who is falsely accused of removing hostage posters, causing him to fight for his career and proclaim his innocen

This Valentine's Day weekend, audiences finally saw the arrival of one of 2026's most highly anticipated films: Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights , starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. Based on the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, this beloved classic is no stranger to being adapted for the screen. Whether it be for a feature film or a mini-series, Wuthering Heights has been retold countless times, as far back as 1939. This tale of forbidden love and class disparity in 18th

With each passing day, we draw closer and closer to the 98th Academy Awards. In addition to rewarding the best features of the past year, the Oscars also pays attention to animated and live action shorts. One of the most pleasantly surprising nominations this year is Jane Austen's Period Drama by Steve Pinder and Julia Aks, who also served as lead actor. The film is a comedy that pokes fun at men's ignorance of female anatomy, no matter how expensive their education might've

It's that time of year again: awards season! Every day we grow closer and closer to the 98th Academy Awards, a ceremony with some of the toughest competition audiences have seen in years. This week we had the privilege and pleasure to sit down with Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata, the filmmakers behind Two People Exchanging Saliva ; one of the Oscar-nominated short films in the live action category this year. After premiering at Telluride and AFI Fest back in 2024, the f

This year marked the last Sundance Film Festival to take place in its historic home of Park City, Utah. So the stakes were particularly high for a strong slate of films before the festival moves to Boulder, Colorado in 2027. This year's Sundance saw the release of dozens of new films that we will be talking about for the next 365 days, but one standout that nobody saw coming was The History of Concrete by John Wilson, best known for his HBO series: How to with John Wilson . E

This year's Sundance Film Festival was one for the books, not only because it's the last one in Park City, but also because of its particularly strong slate. Among that slate was Jane Elliott Against the World by Judd Ehrlich, a documentary that explores the life and work of one of America's most fierce racial justice activists. At the premiere, we were lucky enough to share a few words with one of the documentary's featured subjects, four-time Grammy winner, Killer Mike of

The fabled Sundance Film Festival is known for bringing new groundbreaking work to the forefront of the film world. Whether it's features, shorts, or documentaries, there is always something great to see at Sundance. This year was the festival's final year in Park City, so the stakes to debut important projects felt higher than ever. One of the most profound films this year was feature documentary, Jane Elliott Against the World by Judd Ehrlich, which serves to not only celeb

[the following review contains spoilers] We all remember "brat summer," after all it was less than two years ago. Normally retrospective films come decades after a big event, but audiences didn't have to wait long to see Charli xcx's brat make an appearance on the big screen. Premiering at this year's Sundance Film Festival, The Moment is one of the most confused and convoluted films I have seen in a long time. Despite my love for Charli's music and respect for the cultural

The concept of the Celebrity Sex Pass is supposed to be a thought experiment - a premise so outlandish that it would never possibly come to fruition… right? That is the question asked by David Wain's new star-studded absurdist comedy, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass - a new take on The Wizard of Oz that had audiences absolutely roaring with laughter at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Narrated by the local mailman (Fred Melamed), when small town Kansas hairdres

Easily one of the most important films at this year's Sundance Film Festival is feature documentary: Who Killed Alex Odeh? A project by filmmakers, William Lafi Youmans and Jason Osder that examines the 1985 political assassination of Palestinian-American activist, Alex Odeh in Santa Ana, California. Four decades later, Odeh and his family have never been given closure or justice despite his suspected assassins living as free men. This week we got the incredible opportunity

Not every film at Sundance is going to be a barrel of laughs. In fact, the festival has been a champion of innovative, risky films that push the envelope; telling stories that otherwise wouldn't have been told. One of those films this year is Union County by Adam Meeks, a story about a man's struggles with opioid addiction and road to redemption in rural Ohio. Featuring, believe it or not, the best performance of Noah Centineo's career. Union County is based on Adam Meeks

This week, Australian/British feature film, Fing! premiered in Park City Utah for the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Appearing in the Family Matinee category, this David Walliams adaptation is a colorful, ridiculous, cartoony romp sure to entertain the whole family. We here at Cinemasters were lucky to interview the cast and crew of Fing! on the red carpet at the Eccles Theater; featuring input from actors, Iona Bell, Mia Wasikowska and Taika Waititi! Left to right: director,

As a child, I once asked my mother “There are Muslim terrorists and Christian terrorists, why aren’t there any Jewish terrorists?” My mother’s response was simple: “We barely survived The Holocaust. There aren’t enough of us for that.” As I got older and became more educated in history, my mother’s assertion began to fall apart. Not only had there been Jewish terrorists throughout history, but their numbers had grown in the wake of The Holocaust. I was upset with my mother, I

Out of the countless films premiering at this year's Sundance Film Festival, few have been more anticipated than Kogonada's Zi . Despite a jam-packed festival schedule, I was lucky enough to catch the premiere of Zi , the latest film from acclaimed Korean-American director, Kogonada, known for his previous projects like 2017's Columbus and 2020's After Yang . Over the course of the year, this mononymous director as solidified himself as one of the industry's most innovative

Independent film festivals like Sundance have a reputation for delivering innovative, daring, and edgy new films to audiences from around the world. Documentaries and experimental projects that uncover the darkest truths in our world. That was not the case for this week's family matinee presentation of Jeffrey Walker's Fing! a new Australian/British fantasy film adapted from David Walliams' book. The movie premiered this week to a full theater of festival-goers, adolescents

[the following review is spoiler-free] At film festivals, I tend to go into screenings completely blind, and this year's Sundance Film Festival is no different. That was not the case this afternoon when I entered my screening of Gregg Araki's I Want Your Sex , my personally most anticipated film of 2026. As a major fan of Araki's previous work, I have been keeping track of this film's development for the past year, desperate to lay my eyes on it. But despite the sheer antici

The Sundance Film Festival is one of the biggest and most prestigious events the entertainment industry has to offer, seeing the release of films that will fill the zeitgeist for the next twelve months. One of the most-anticipated releases this year was Cathy Yan's The Gallerist , a star-studded black comedy that premiered last night at the Eccles Theater. But are hype and sheer star power enough to fulfill colossal audience expectations? The Gallerist tells the story of art

[the following review is spoiler-free] On an Island in the sea, there were once two gulls, a brother and a sister… So opens The Incomer , a dark comedy written and directed by Louis Paxton, starring Domhnall Gleeson and executive produced by Moby and Trevor Noah. Shot and set in Scotland, I found The Incomer to be a quintessentially Scottish film - to the point where my only real criticism was that I struggled to understand certain words due to the thickness of the accents.

[the following review is spoiler-free] Heart-pumping, gut-wrenching, spine-tingling, stomach-churning, bone-chilling. These are some of many ways one could describe Natalie Erika James' Saccharine , a new Australian horror feature that premiered this week at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Despite a busy start to the last Sundance in Park City, this is by-far a personal favorite not only as a film fanatic, but as a young woman. Saccharine is unlike anything I've ever seen,