Sundance Film Festival titles arrive in theaters and streaming in October
As the air turns cold this October, 12 titles that premiered at the 2025 and 2026 Sundance Film Festivals arrive in theaters and on streaming services, sundance.org reported. The monthly release calendar spans nine documentaries and three narrative films, offering viewers a mix of survival stories, historical reckonings, and fictional fables just in time for the fall season.
Among the non-fiction offerings arriving on streaming platforms is The Last First: Winter K2, debuting on Apple TV on October 2. Director Amir Bar-Lev’s documentary captures the race to achieve the first winter summit of K2 after Pakistan reopened its borders during the COVID-19 pandemic. The film utilizes footage shot by climbers on the mountain, including a team led by Nepali British mountaineer Nirmal “Nims” Purja, alongside interviews with survivors to examine the high human and financial costs of extreme mountaineering.
Climbers, Activists, and Artists Drive October’s Documentary Slate
Persistence links many of the month’s documentary releases. On October 12, Netflix debuts Free Leonard Peltier, directed by Jesse Short Bull and David France. The film examines the 1975 shootout on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation that led to the contested conviction of American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier, framing his nearly five decades of imprisonment within the broader history of U.S. government actions against Indigenous peoples.
Music and cultural history also anchor several projects. Netflix streams The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable on October 16. Joanna Natasegara’s documentary follows Tarik “Cilvaringz” Azzougarh, a Dutch Moroccan superfan who became a producer on Once Upon a Time in Shaolin—the exclusive Wu-Tang Clan album pressed as a single copy in a silver box and sold to pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli. Also arriving on October 16 in select theaters is Once Upon a Time in Harlem. The film presents footage from a 1972 gathering organized by documentarian William Greaves at Duke Ellington’s Harlem townhouse, where figures like Romare Bearden and James Van Der Zee discussed the Harlem Renaissance. David Greaves completed the project more than 50 years later.
Wicker Brings Olivia Colman to Theaters in October
On the narrative side, Wicker brings Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård to select theaters on October 23 before a wider expansion on October 30. Directed by Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer, the film adapts Ursula Wills-Jones’ short story “The Wicker Husband.” Colman stars as a lonely fisherwoman in a village who asks a master craftsman, played by Peter Dinklage, to weave her a husband. Skarsgård plays the resulting wicker man, whose presence disrupts the village’s rigid rules.
Other narrative features exploring personal journeys include Paloma Schneideman’s Big Girls Don’t Cry, which opens in select theaters on October 9. Set in a New Zealand beach town in the summer of 2006, the film stars Ani Palmer as a 14-year-old navigating adolescence. Meanwhile, Noah Segan’s caper The Only Living Pickpocket in New York arrives in select theaters on October 16 and expands on October 23.
International and historical documentaries round out the month’s calendar. Kikuyu Land, co-directed by Bea Wangondu and Andrew H. Brown, opens in select theaters on October 9, exploring ancestral land claims in Kenya. Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes’ One in a Million arrives on October 21, following a Syrian refugee girl named Isra’a over a decade from Aleppo to Turkey, Germany, and back to Syria. Finally, Jason Osder and William Lafi Youmans present Who Killed Alex Odeh? in select theaters on October 30, revisiting the 1985 killing of the Palestinian American civil rights activist.
As the seasons change, the family’s efforts expand, and their hard-won knowledge of the river becomes a lifeline for others searching for their own missing loved ones.