Don’t Miss Indies: What to Watch in January
Happy New Year! Kicking off 2026 with a visual tour of the world, this month’s Don’t-Miss list includes films set in the US as well as Australia, Canada, Spain, Portugal, The Philippines, Belgium, Thailand, and Iceland. Some are English-language, but you’ll also hear Korean in The Mother and the Bear, Thai in A Useful Ghost, and the prize goes to Magellan for its globe-encompassing Spanish, Portuguese and Vasayan.
Please enjoy the journey.
WE BURY THE DEAD
When You Can Watch: January 2
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Writer/Director: Zak Hilditch
Cast: Daisy Ridley, Brenton Thwaites, Mark Coles Smith
Why We’re Excited: It’s an Australian horror movie with a spin on zombies that forces Ava (Daisy Ridley, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) to not only avoid zombification but to face her own unfinished business. After a military disaster in Tasmania leaves casualties who don’t stay dead, Ava searches for her missing husband among civilian homes populated with wily corpses whose base instincts are still intact. Writer/Director Zak Hilditch (1992) wrote an initial draft that didn’t even involve zombies, but once they became a factor he challenged himself to make them as organic to the story as possible. Between the movie’s practical effects, detailed sets filmed on location in real homes (complete with family photos on the walls), the unorthodox take puts us in a position to see human life from a new angle.
THE MOTHER AND THE BEAR
When You Can Watch: January 9
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Writer/Director: Johnny Ma
Cast: Kim Ho-jung, Lee Won-jae, Jonathan Kim
Why We’re Excited: Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Johnny Ma (Old Stone) has devised a whimsical Korean-Canadian comedy involving a comatose young woman (Sumi, played by Leere Park) who fell after coming upon a wild bear in the streets of Winnipeg. Flying to her aid from Seoul, her mother Sara (Kim Ho-jung, Revivre) gets into dutiful motherly mischief – starting with searching out a suitable husband for her daughter. Playing with Korean tropes, Ma draws heavily on stylistic sensibilities in K-Drama – a value that required training for the Chilean post-production unit who had to be exposed to the genre for its specific expression. “I thought The Mother and the Bear was a very fresh take on something Korean,” said Ho-jung in Asian Movie Pulse. Mother explores courage, cultural identity and finding stability in a world knocked sideways.
MAGELLAN
When You Can Watch: January 9
Where You Can Watch: Select Theaters
Writer/Director: Lav Diaz
Cast: Gael García Bernal, Ângela Azevedo, Amado Arjay Babon
Why We’re Excited: Spirit Award Nominee Lav Diaz (Norte, the End of History) is known for his lengthy films, and his meticulously researched reflection on the final 15 years of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan takes 3 hours to unfold. Following Magellan (Gael García Bernal, Mozart in the Jungle) from Europe to Southeast Asia, we watch an ambitious young man harden with cruelty and lust for power. The Filipino champion of slow cinema puts his seven years of research on rich display with shocking scenes of oppression and a raw revisitation of the explorer narrative. “It’s a film about how power intoxicates and the myth of discovery”, says Diaz, quoted by Festival de Cannes. “Here, Magellan is no hero, he is a man facing his own oblivion.”
YOUNG MOTHERS
When You Can Watch: January 9
Where You Can Watch: Select Theaters
Writer/Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Cast: Babette Verbeek, Elsa Houben, Janaina Halloy
Why We’re Excited: The Spirit nominated Dardenne brothers (The Kid with a Bike) are no strangers to the indie screen, with twelve features behind them and a tendency to highlight stories of personal transformation through human connection. Inspired by a real-life institution for teen mothers in Liege, Belgium, the Dardennes wrote a docurealistic script highlighting the stories of five new mothers who are also minors. Among the inherent challenges of new motherhood, each of the young women must also contend with drug addiction, mental illness, and family dysfunction. Facing their futures with support from the care workers teaching them to look after their babies, they make difficult choices under pressure. The Guardian calls it a “poignant, compassionate work of unforced social realism.”
DEAD MAN’S WIRE
When You Can Watch: January 16
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Director: Gus Van Sant
Cast: Dacre Montgomery, Bill Skarsgård, Al Pacino
Why We’re Excited: Spirit Award nominee Gus Van Sant (Elephant) was inspired by the breakneck pace of Austin Kolodney’s scripted retelling of a true crime story from 1977. One February morning, an Indianapolis man named Tony (Bill Skarsgård, It) set out to kidnap the president of Meridian Mortgage Company – M.L. Hall, played by Spirit Award nominee Al Pacino (Looking for Richard). Finding him out on vacation, Tony kidnaps Hall’s son instead (Dacre Montgomery, Stranger Things). Keeping his hostage submissive through a sawn-off shotgun on a wire rigged to shoot, Tony claims the company deliberately sabotaged his investment; he demands $5 million and a personal apology. “When I read the script,” said Van Sant in a Variety interview, “there were links embedded in it — you could click them and hear the real 911 calls. Tony talked so fast, like Scorsese on a cocaine bender, cracking jokes and losing his temper. I thought, ‘This is an amazing character.’”
Five Film Independent members hold Executive Producer roles: Tiffany Boyle, Oleg Dubson, Max Loeb, Katharina Otto-Bernstein, and Elsa Ramo.
CHARLIE THE WONDERDOG
When You Can Watch: January 16
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Writer/Director: Shea Wageman
Cast: Owen Wilson, Sebastian Billingsley-Rodriguez, Tabitha St. Germain
Why We’re Excited: This animated adventure is about a dog with superpowers, but it’s also about restoring a friendship that’s suffered a rift. Voiced by Owen Wilson (Spirit Winner Inherent Vice), Charlie is an ordinary dog with a boy best friend named Danny (Dawson Littman). Danny imagines heroic adventures for the pair of them, but when Charlie is abducted by aliens and given real superpowers, the wonderdog is suddenly catapulted into world renown all on his own. But the supervillain that must ultimately be confronted is a cat plotting the downfall of all humankind. It will take a human/canine duo to win the final showdown.
ISLANDS
When You Can Watch: January 30
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Writer/Director: Jan-Ole Gerster
Cast: Sam Riley, Stacy Martin, Jack Farthing
Why We’re Excited: A reserved missing-person mystery from German filmmaker Jan-Ole Gerster (A Coffee in Berlin), inspired by a Fuerteventura escape from another Berlin winter years ago. As Gerster considered the tennis coach hitting ball after ball on a dilapidated court, the story began to emerge: a retired tennis pro named Tom (Sam Riley, Control) trading on his opportunities of a decade ago while slowly going to seed among vacationers and a steady stream of admirers. Giving tennis lessons by day, he befriends a 7-year-old boy – the son of Anne (Stacy Martin, The Brutalist) and Dave, played by Jack Farthing (Spirit Award nominated Rain Dogs). When Dave goes missing and Tom is the primary suspect, it slowly becomes the wakeup call he would never have sought.
MOSES THE BLACK
When You Can Watch: January 30
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Writer/Director: Yelena Popovic
Cast: Omar Epps, Chukwudi Iwuji, Wiz Khalifa
Why We’re Excited: 50 Cent is on the list of Executive Producers for this movie about a fourth-century Egyptian saint set in modern-day Chicago. Omar Epps (Love & Basketball) stars as Malik, a gang leader emerging from prison and immediately hitting a power struggle with his old crew. He is visited by Saint Moses the Black (Chukwudi Iwuji, Designated Survivor), a former gang leader himself who had a sudden change of heart and became a priest. “He killed a lot of people and did a lot of bad things,” Serbian filmmaker Yelena Popovic (Man of God) told The Soulful Side of Life with Ally Portee, “now people were coming to get advice from him.” Punctuated by performances from multi-platinum selling, Grammy-nominated artists Wiz Khalifa (Spinning Gold) and Quavo (High Rollers) as rival gang leaders, this promises to be a memorable retelling of a true story.
THE LOVE THAT REMAINS
When You Can Watch: January 30
Where You Can Watch: Select Theaters
Writer/Director: Hlynur Pálmason
Cast: Panda, Saga Garðarsdóttir, Sverrir Gudnason
Why We’re Excited: The changing seasons of an Icelandic hilltop sets the stage for this year in the life of a dissolving marriage. Icelandic filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason (Spirit Award nominee Godland) cast his three children as the energetic progeny of Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir, The New Year’s Lampoon), an artist struggling to land a gallery show while managing her newly single motherhood. Her not-quite-ex-husband Magnús (Sverrir Gudnason, Borg vs. McEnroe) is a fisherman whose infrequent visits to the house seems to effect even more isolation from the family. The journey of the film centers on vignettes of their previous life together and bits of magical realism, for an intimate exploration of familial complexity and the deep devotion that never ends.
PROGRAMMER’S PICK: A USEFUL GHOST
When You Can Watch: January 16
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Director: Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
Cast: Davika Hoorne, Wisarut Himmarat, Apasiri Nitibhon
Why We’re Excited: From Film Independent Lead Programmer Jenn Wilson
A first feature from Thai writer/director, Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, A Useful Ghost, premiered at Cannes in 2025 where it won the Cannes Critics Week prize. One of the most bizarre, hilarious, and inventive movies of the year, the film tells the parallel stories of a young gay student called the Academic Ladyboy whose vacuum cleaner is possessed by a ghost, and appliance factory owner, March, whose wife has just died and been reincarnated as a vacuum cleaner. March’s controlling mother, however, is not amused that his wife is back in his life and a human vs ghost drama unfolds enveloping more than just the family. This movie is an enchanting and much-needed addition to a year of film that felt lacking in so many ways.
Film Independent member Karim Aitouna serves as Co-Producer.
KEY
Film Independent Fellow or Member
Film Independent Presents Screening, Q&A
Microbudget
Filmmaker or Lead Characters of Color
Film Independent Spirit Award Winner or Nominee
Female Filmmaker
LGBT Filmmaker or Lead LGBT Characters
First-time Filmmaker
LA Film Festival Winner or Nominee
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