The Best Indie Movies To Watch In 2026
From the films you might have missed to awards-season winners and this year’s film festival contenders, these are the best indie movies to add to your watch list. By OLIVE WAKEFIELD and VICTORIA NEWTON-SYMS
The Invite
Olivia Wilde’s The Invite breathes fresh life into the genre of marital chamber dramas, delivering something at once raw, revealing and unexpectedly tender – as well as laugh-out-loud funny. Written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, the film follows two couples (Wilde and Seth Rogen; Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton) over the course of a seemingly benign dinner that quickly unravels into a forensic dissection of long-buried resentments, emotional dependencies, thwarted ambitions and sexual anxieties. In movie theaters from June 26
Her Private Hell
Nicolas Winding Refn returns to the big screen with a hypnotic, neon-drenched horror-thriller that feels like a natural successor to The Neon Demon, but even darker. Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival 2026, the film stars Havana Rose Liu, alongside Sophie Thatcher and Charles Melton, and unfolds in a dreamlike metropolis that is engulfed by a creeping, otherworldly threat. At its core: a young woman searching for her father, her journey intersecting with a parallel descent into something infernal. As ever with Refn, plot is almost beside the point; what matters is atmosphere and a deeply stylized dread. In movie theaters from July 24
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
Jane Schoenbrun’s feverish new feature will open the prestigious Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival 2026, which celebrates innovative, auteur-driven cinema. The film takes the bones of a slasher movie and turns them inside out. Starring Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder, the story follows a young queer director who is tasked with rebooting a cult horror franchise, only to become dangerously entangled with its original ‘final girl’. What unfolds is a delirious, psychosexual spiral, interrogating how horror has historically framed identity, desire and deviance. Schoenbrun has described it as a “sleepover classic” gone feral. In movie theaters from August 7
Paper Tiger
With Scarlett Johansson, Miles Teller and Adam Driver in lead roles, Paper Tiger focusses on two brothers in the pursuit of glory, who become entangled in a Russian mafia plot, leading to betrayal, violence, corruption and broken familial bonds. Director James Gray – who also made The Lost City of Z and Ad Astra – is known for entrancing, character-driven dramas, so expect ambitious, philosophical work.
A Girl’s Story
A Girl’s Story is French actor and writer Judith Godrèche's directorial debut. Part documentary, part work of art, it is an adaptation of an autobiographical novel by Annie Ernaux, recounting a young woman’s formative experiences at a summer camp. Godrèche became an important voice during the #MeToo movement, sharing some of her own experiences of abuse in the film industry, so her input into the film is likely to be nuanced and poignant.
The Gallerist
Natalie Portman stars as a desperate gallery owner whose outrageous scheme to sell a dead body at Art Basel Miami anchors this razor-edged satire of the art world and its unforgiving power dynamics. Directed by Cathy Yan – returning to Sundance Film Festival following her 2018 debut Dead Pigs – the film is buoyed by performances from an exceptional ensemble including Jenna Ortega, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sterling K. Brown and Charli XCX, and further cements Yan’s deft eye for skewering society’s most uncomfortable truths. Release date to be announced later this year.
The Best Summer
When director Tamra Davis was packing up to evacuate her home during the LA wildfires last year, she unearthed her long-forgotten behind-the-scenes footage of what might be the greatest summer in rock and roll history. Davis’s videotapes, shot in 1995 at the little-known Australian music festival Summersault, show candid moments of headliners like the Beastie Boys, Bikini Kill, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters and Pavement hanging out backstage. The result is a perfectly unpolished look at a zeitgeist in action. There’s no heavy-handed narration or over-the-top nostalgia here; Davis captures the thrill of youth, community and creative freedom with an immediacy that feels almost radical today. It’s a reminder of a time when music scenes were lived, not livestreamed. Premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January, with a release scheduled for later this year
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