2026 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour

6 films
99 min.

The 2026 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour, presented by Ketel One Vodka, is a curated collection of six standout short films from this year’s Festival, including three Festival Award-winning titles. This 99-minute program offers a mix of stories that highlight bold perspectives and next-gen storytellers.

The 2026 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour provides a curated glimpse into the Festival’s selections, highlighting the depth of narrative possibilities explored in the short film format. For those who couldn’t attend the 2026 Sundance Film Festival — held in person in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah, from January 22 to February 1, as well as online — this tour invites audiences across the world to experience a collection of resonant, provocative, tender, and human-centered fiction, nonfiction, and animated shorts that showcase truly dynamic independent storytelling.

Long recognized as a vital platform for short-form cinema, the Sundance Film Festival annually spotlights some of the boldest emerging voices in filmmaking today and has long been established as a place to discover talented directors, such as alumni Andrea Arnold, Lake Bell, Damien Chazelle, Destin Daniel Cretton, Jay and Mark Duplass, Debra Granik, Rashaad Ernesto Green, Reinaldo Marcus Green, Sterlin Harjo, Todd Haynes, Don Hertzfeldt, Sky Hopinka, Shaka King, Lynne Ramsay, Dee Rees, Joey Soloway, Taika Waititi, and many others.

Program

The Boys and the Bees / U.S.A. (Director and Producer: Arielle Knight, Producer: Sean Weiner) — On an idyllic farm in rural Georgia, Black beekeeping parents tenderly share their knowledge of life, love, and nature with their young sons while restoring their homestead.

Short Film Jury Award: Nonfiction

Arielle Knight is an Emmy Award–winning producer and New York–based filmmaker whose work spans short and feature-length films centered on Black life and community. Supported by Sundance Institute, Ford Foundation, Catapult Film Fund, and others, she is developing hybrid projects that blur genre and reimagine form.

Crisis Actor / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Lily Platt, Producers: Sophie Seyd, Alex Bendo, Lexi Preiser) — Fired from her day job, an impulsive actress crashes a support group and spirals into a chaotic night that forces her to face her addiction to drama. Cast: Sarah Steele, Philip Ettinger. Short Film Jury Award: U.S. Fiction

Lily Platt is a filmmaker from New York City. Platt worked as a staff producer at Story Syndicate, where she made docu-series for HBO and Netflix. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in film at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Crisis Actor is her debut short.

Living with a Visionary / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Stephen P. Neary, Producer: Mireia Vilanova) — After 50 years of marriage, John must care for his wife while learning to live alongside her vivid hallucinations. Cast: James Cromwell, Katherine LaVictoire.

Short Film Jury Award: Animation

Stephen P. Neary is a Los Angeles–based writer, director, and storyboard artist known for creating The Fungies! for Cartoon Network/HBO Max. His credits include KPop Demon Hunters, Clarence, two Ice Age films, and Rio. He teaches at CalArts and works as a story artist for Netflix, Illumination, Annapurna, and Sony.

Marga en el DF / Mexico, U.S.A. (Director and Screenwriter: Gabriela Ortega, Producers: Karla Luna Cantú, Natalia Gonzalez, Eugenio Valero, Carlos López Estrada, Valerie Bush, Stacy Perskie) — In the wake of Selena Quintanilla’s murder, Marga’s life takes an unexpected turn at 21 weeks pregnant during a surprise visit to Mexico City. Cast: Camila Santana, David Palacio, Xabiani Ponce de León, Andrea de Fátima.

Gabriela Ortega is an award-winning filmmaker from the Dominican Republic. Her short film Huella premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, and its feature script participated in the Sundance Institute labs. She is developing a film for a major studio and is preparing her debut feature set in the Dominican Republic.

Pankaja / U.S.A., India (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Anooya Swamy, Producers: Nakirekanti Swamy, Archana Swamy, Vindhya Gupta) — Pankaja, along with her daughter, Lalli, searches for her missing husband through the city slums of Bangalore to bring him back home. Cast: Harshini Boyalla, Padmashree G.

Anooya Swamy is a New York–based Indian filmmaker born and raised in Bangalore, pursuing her MFA in film/TV production at Tisch School of the Arts, where she served as Spike Lee’s assistant. She is an Ang Lee Scholar, a BAFTA Scholar, and a Sundance Ignite x Adobe fellow.

Sauna Sickness / Sweden (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Malin Barr) — Struggling to maintain the peace she mistakes for love, Cleo’s steamy New Year’s Eve plans fissure into a chilling nightmare. Cast: Thea Sofie Loch Næss, Adam Lundgren, Magnus Krepper, Sanna Krepper.

Malin Barr is a Swedish writer, director, and actor working between Stockholm and Los Angeles, whose work centers on female-driven stories, blending dark humor with genre elements. She is an alum of the Alma Löv Screenwriting Academy and the Cine Qua Non Writers Lab. Her latest short film, Sauna Sickness, premiered in competition at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and was an official selection at the Göteborg Film Festival and SXSW London, among others. The film is represented by Premium Films (Paris) and has secured distribution with Canal+.

Sundance Film Festival®

The Sundance Film Festival, a program of the nonprofit Sundance Institute, is the preeminent gathering of original storytellers and audiences seeking new voices and fresh perspectives. Since 1985, hundreds of films launched at the Festival have gone on to gain critical acclaim and reach new audiences worldwide. The Festival has introduced some of the most groundbreaking films and episodic works of the past three decades, including Dìdi (弟弟), A Real Pain, Daughters, Thelma, Will & Harper, Past Lives, 20 Days in Mariupol, The Eternal Memory, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, A Thousand and One, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, Rye Lane, Navalny, Fire of Love, Flee, CODA, Passing, Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Minari, Clemency, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Zola, O.J.: Made in America, On the Record, Boys State, The Farewell, Honeyland, One Child Nation, The Souvenir, The Infiltrators, Sorry to Bother You, Top of the Lake, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Hereditary, Call Me by

Your Name, Get Out, The Big Sick, Mudbound, Fruitvale Station, Whiplash, Brooklyn, Precious, The Cove, Little Miss Sunshine, An Inconvenient Truth, Napoleon Dynamite, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Reservoir Dogs, and sex, lies, and videotape. The program consists of fiction and nonfiction features and short films, series and episodic content, innovative storytelling, and performances, as well as conversations and other events. The 2027 Sundance Film Festival will take place in Boulder, Colorado, from January 21–31, 2027. Be a part of the Festival at festival.sundance.org and follow the Festival on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, and Bluesky.