A true crime thriller with black-comic energy, a generation-spanning tale of Palestinian dislocation, babies having babies in Belgium, and a colonial trail of tears that circumnavigates the globe — 2026 is getting off to a robust cinematic start.
And there's still time to catch colorful holiday awards contenders — from pink and green witches, to songs sung blue, to ping pong balls glowing orange — before Sunday's Golden Globes.
Dead Man's Wire
In limited theaters Friday, expands next week
Gus Van Sant's whip-smart true-crime dramatization of a 1970s hostage incident nods, on occasion, to Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon, while crackling with a black-comic energy all its own. On February 8, 1977, Indianapolis businessman Tony Kiritzis (Bill Skarsgård) kidnapped Richard Hall, a mortgage company president (Stranger Things' Dacre Montgomery), claiming that Hall's company had sabotaged his real estate investment. Kiritzis rigged a 12-gauge shotgun with a hair-trigger "dead man's wire" around Hall's neck, ensuring that Hall would die if police sharpshooters tried to kill him. He held Hall for three days as police, family members, a charismatic local radio DJ (Colman Domingo) and TV reporters were drawn into the standoff. (Kiritzis insists, to contradict the title of a then-popular anthem, that his revolution will be televised.)
He sees himself as a common man standing up to a system rigged against people like him, and when Van Sant cuts to Hall's father, the mortgage company's smugly unctuous, fat-cat founder (Al Pacino) vacationing in Florida, there's no question where your sympathies are meant to lie. The film is designed as a timely reminder that when financiers sell the American dream, there's often fine print that keeps it just out of reach — and a gripping, often hilarious, and briskly entertaining reminder it is.
Magellan
In limited theaters Friday
Filipino director Lav Diaz is known for lengthy films — his Evolution of a Filipino Family clocked in at 10 hours and 24 minutes) — so perhaps the biggest news about this odd circumnavigator biopic is that he's created a relatively snappy little 160-minute feature. Still not an easy sit in a conventional sense — the first ship makes its appearance more than an hour in — it stars Gael García Bernal, speaking Portuguese with a Spanish accent, and traversing more than a decade of colonial history in the Pacific. The film begins with one of the filmmaker's characteristically long, unbroken shots, this one of a naked, brown-skinned woman fishing in a stream before she catches sight of something that sends her scurrying back to her village. "I saw a white man," she tells her tribe. "The promise of the gods of our ancestors is here."
The villagers greet this news with excitement, but as they chant "The god of water has spoken," the title card for Magellan drops and things go rapidly awry. The film takes a roundabout route, with many dead bodies, severed body parts, and narrative detours before circling back to these particular people. A nine-hour version is in the works that will perhaps tie things together more clearly. For now, though, while the filmmaker almost always keeps the actual carnage offscreen, the less than salutary effects of colonial conquest are ever front and center.
All That's Left of You
In limited theaters Friday
At a demonstration in the West Bank in 1988, a shot rings out, and a teenager ducks for cover. "I'm not here to blame you, I'm here to tell you who is my son," says his mother Hanan, played by filmmaker Cherien Dabis, straight to the camera. "But for you to understand, I must tell you what happened to his grandfather."
So begins this epic, generation-spanning story of a Palestinian family, stretching from prosperity, orange groves, and a young father and son, Sharif and Salim, reciting poetry in Jaffa in 1948, all the way through dislocation and poverty and Salim's struggles decades later to protect his own son, Noor.
The family's expulsion from land now claimed by the state of Israel stands in for that of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. But Dabis, who wrote the screenplay as well as directing and performing, weaves in the historical context through intimate details. Sharif stops at a fruit stand decades after losing their orchards and remembers that, "Queen Elizabeth ate our oranges." Still, he can't recall where he is when he steps outside their new home. "Maybe it's God being kind by helping him forget," suggests a doctor.
Life goes on. Salim is humiliated by Israeli soldiers in front of Noor, and fresh wedges are driven between generations. Tragedy follows tragedy, forcing unimaginably harrowing decisions, all the way to a moving emotional closure in Tel Aviv (Jaffa) in 2022. The film was in pre-production during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks and Israel's subsequent invasion of Gaza, which forced filmmakers to shoot in Cyprus, Greece and Jordan. It's a fresh dislocation that can't help coloring how this wrenching film is received.
Young Mothers
In limited theaters Friday
Leading with compassion, filmmaking brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes embrace four variously struggling teen moms in this gently haunting hug of social realism. That's not to suggest there's anything gentle about their situation. All are residents at a Belgian shelter where social workers try to a) coach them on caring for their infants and b) help them through the issues that interfere with their ability to do that. New arrival Jessica, barely two weeks before delivery, seeks closure with the mother who left her with foster parents when she was a baby. Perla pushes a stroller to greet her boyfriend as he's released from juvenile detention, only to find him more interested in the joint she's brought than the kid he fathered. Ariane, 15, who grew up in an abusive household, has decided she doesn't want to keep her baby (her alcoholic mom does, desperately) and is meeting with possible foster parents. And recovering addicts Julie and Dylan seem to have a real shot at making a go of parenting, if they can just stay clean. The Dardennes are at their poignant best, capturing moments of heartbreak and hope. It's hard to imagine any viewer staying dry-eyed when one baby offers her mom the most beautiful smile at the precise moment it will hurt the most.
The Voice of Hind Rajab
Expanding
The title, sadly, says it all. Kaouther Ben Hania's wrenching single-location drama is set in a Red Crescent call center in the West Bank where operators field calls from people miles away in Gaza who need help. While playing rock/paper/scissors with a colleague, Omar (Motaz Malhees) gets a call from a man in Germany, frantic because he can't reach his relatives who were driving in Gaza and now appear, from GPS tracking, to be in a gas station. Omar makes a call to the cellphone number he's given, and discovers that Hind, a terrified five-year-old, is trapped in the car with the bodies of her family, surrounded by tanks and constant bombing and strafing.
The next several hours are spent trying to get clearance from the Israeli military to reach her with an ambulance that is eight minutes away. The film's power stems from a simple fact: Hind's voice is real — recorded on January 29, 2024, when she was trapped in the car. The actors on screen react in real-time with the recordings of that harrowing day, and the effect is at once painfully direct, and profound.
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