Third Coast Review film critics Steve Prokopy and Lisa Trifone are attending the 2026 Sundance Film Festival (which moves to Boulder, Colorado, next year), sharing their brief takes on festival premieres and the films we'll be talking about in the coming year.
Broken English
Though it shares a title with Zoe Cassavetes' 2007 narrative, this Broken English, a truly unique documentary by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, couldn’t be more different or more intriguing. This film takes its title from British singer/songwriter (and so much more) Marianne Faithfull’s 1979 comeback album, a return to the music scene after a dark period of her life and uncertainty that she’d ever step on stage again. And while this moment in her long and storied career is given its due, Broken English the movie covers the full arc of her life, from being “discovered” at a party in the 1960s to her battle with COVID in early 2020 and her final years reflecting on all her stories, struggles and triumphs.
Best described as a sort of hybrid documentary (more on that in a moment), Forsythe and Pollard have previously collaborated on this style of film in The Extraordinary Miss Flower; here they seem to have perfected their style (in collaboration with co-writer Ian Martin) to create something that is as whimsical and engaging as it is informative and encyclopedic. The film stars Tilda Swinton as The Overseer at the Ministry of Not Forgetting (which is different, we’re told, from simply remembering), a fictional but apparently extremely well-resourced British municipal department intent on capturing the stories and legacies of those at risk of being, well, forgotten. George Mackay (1917, The End) is The Record Keeper, The Overseer’s man on the ground digging into archives and untangling the many threads of a very complicated and often misunderstood life. Zawe Ashton (All of You) and Sophia Di Martino (Loki) pop up as The Archivist and The Researcher, working behind the scenes to ensure the history books get Faithfull’s life story right.
There’s a lot going on here, including quite a bit of music and not all via archived performances; the film brings in several familiar faces to perform some of Faithfull’s best-known songs, and the studio band supports the film’s creative form through experimental sound design that complements the bold editing and story structure. If documentaries are struggling to find audiences as the genre descends into slap-dash true crime fodder and little else, Broken English reminds us that there is so much more that can be done in the name of fact-based storytelling on screen. The film’s impressive and creative production would already make it worth seeing for its unique place in the documentary film landscape; the fact that the story it's telling is one rooted both in a singular person’s outsized experiences and her undeniable contributions to music, culture, feminism and beyond makes it one for the history books. (Lisa Trifone)
The Incomer
Set on a remote Scottish island with a population of two, The Incomer, the feature debut from writer/director Louis Paxton, shows us a turning point in the lives of brother and sister Isla and Sandy (Gayle Rankin and Grant O’Rourke, respectively), who have devoted their lives to protecting this wee isle from mainland folk. They see themselves and their now-dead parents as the latest in a long line of mythical bird creatures who learn fighting, build weapons out of bones, and perform regular rituals to stand watch over the seas around the island and take up arms when strangers appear. That includes a local government official, Daniel (Domhnall Gleeson), who shows up one day to tell the siblings that they need to leave the island and he will help them relocate.
Neither trusts Daniel, and after the pair decide not to throw him off a cliff into the sea, both Isla and Sandy realize they both are attracted to him, which causes friction in the family. Drawing from a certain amount of Scottish folklore (including talking sea creatures and hunting seagulls for dinner), the film is a surprisingly charming, disarmingly funny, and a wholly creative journey in which we watch Daniel get drawn into the beauty of the place while the siblings start to imagine the wonders of the mainland (like avocados and stores full of food). And there's a wonderful running gag about Daniel retelling the Lord of the Rings story (with a few minor adjustments) and selling it as his own in order to keep Isla and Sandy engaged with him.
The film finds it necessary to feed us a villain character in the form of Daniel’s evil boss, Roz (Michelle Gomez), and her main henchman, Calum (Emun Elliott), when the far more interesting antagonist for Isla especially is an unnamed sea creature (John Hannah) who represents her loneliness, boredom and fears about outsiders. The creature is constantly trying to lure Isla into the water, even though she can’t swim. All three of the leads are socially awkward, but somehow together, they complete each other to certain degrees. Considering how beautiful and serene the location is, I could have watched this threesome carry on on the island for months, but life and local government have other plans. The would-be love story with Daniel and Isla is going to frustrate some and melt the hearts of most; their chemistry is rock solid and Rankin has a depth I wasn’t expecting for such an exaggerated character. (Steve Prokopy)
Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story
Comedian Maria Bamford has always found ways of expressing her mental health journey in her standup, but this new documentary from filmmakers Judd Apatow (The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling, and this week’s glorious HBO Max doc Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!) and Neil Berkeley (also the film’s cinematographer and director of similarly themed docs Harmontown and Gilbert) feels like it goes even deeper down the Bamford rabbit hole, beginning with her fairly privileged upbringing and taking us to numerous psychiatric appointments and ultimately happiness and fame today. The film doesn’t hesitate to get deep into Bamford’s issues, but it also doesn’t allow itself to stay that way for too long, instead finding a moment from one of her numerous specials in which she addresses whatever the issue at hand may be.
Like nearly all of Apatow’s films (narratives or docs), the running time of Paralyzed by Hope is an issue, even with something this hilarious. There are entire sections of the movie that could have been trimmed or just cut and the points about Bamford’s struggles would still have been made. For example, we meet her husband, Scott Marvel Cassidy, who seems like a lovely, supportive partner with issues of his own—so they have that in common—but there is just way too much footage of him in the doc.
Naturally, other established comics chime in with feelings about Bamford’s work, including Patton Oswalt, Zach Galifianakis, Brian Posehn, Sarah Silverman, Stephen Colbert, and Conan O’Brien. Early on, her style of comedy didn’t get through to audiences, and then, slowly but surely, they just started to get it. We see her relationship with her parents, her sister, old friends, other comics, and we see how all of these elements informed her comedy over the years and how she refined her approach in weaving the personal into her work. Perhaps the most moving part of the film is tracing Bamford’s relationship with her parents, whom she frequently impersonated on stage and rarely in a flattering way. But audiences saw bits of their own families in her work, so she never took it out of the act.
The film finds ways to show Bamford’s vulnerability, artistic creativity, her nurturing of other comics and others with mental health issues, and the way she takes the hardest parts of our world and hers and turned them into inspirational laughter. Even though I was quite familiar with her work over the decades, I learned a great deal about her life (and work) through the film. (Steve Prokopy)
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