Sundance Roundup: 'Nuisance Bear, 'Soul Patrol,' 'Give Me The Ball!' & More
Our final coverage from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival offers quick takes on some great and not-so-great documentaries.
After watching 13 documentaries at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, I’ve reviewed two shorts and one feature, and now I’ve got some thoughts to share on six more films. As for the rest, I don’t have enough to say about them at this time. To see our ranking of all 13, check out our Letterboxd list. A few of the selections I was able to screen were on the list of our most anticipated documentaries of 2026, and they generally did not disappoint. One of them even exceeded my expectations. You can find it at the start of this roundup below.
Nuisance Bear
The best short documentary of 2021 may have spawned the best feature documentary of 2026! Well, spawned isn’t the right word, as Nuisance Bear was always meant to be more than the 14-minute version released five years ago. Directors Jack Weisman and Gabriela Osio Vanden returned to Churchill, Manitoba, to continue their spotlight on the “Polar Bear Capital of the World” and expand their coverage to present more perspectives, including those from a second location, as we see the Inuit relationship to those same creatures causing a fuss down the Bay. The result is another enchanting and more spiritual consideration of wildlife in today’s world.
Unlike the short, this Nuisance Bear includes a score, but not one that steers your feelings, and narration, but not the expositional kind. Spoken by the late Inuit elder Mike Tunalaaq Gibbons, this voiceover is especially personal and specific, yet also represents an Indigenous history that metaphorically relates to the polar bears in certain ways. The documentary also has room for the bears’ point of view within the central exploration of animals encroaching on the civilization that first encroached on their territory and participated in its negative transformation.
Without taking the anthropomorphizing route of so many nature documentaries, Nuisance Bear even manages, quite brilliantly, to give the audience one particular polar bear to care about. Between that and opening with a tourist gaze, Weisman and Osio Vanden really know how to grab the audience and then subvert their expectations. They tug at our heartstrings in a manner that ultimately yanks on our brains. You’ll want to watch it twice, at least once on a big screen, to really appreciate how much is going on with this film, and many more before it.
Soul Patrol
Last year, Sundance gave us “by far the best war movie I’ve seen in a long time” with 2000 Meters to Andriivka, and now the festival has given us another war film masterpiece with Soul Patrol. It’s a completely different kind, though, not that visceral in-the-moment variety. Instead, it’s a historical documentary. But one thing they have in common, as do all the greatest war movies, is attention to characters. Soul Patrol introduces us to the surviving members of the first Black special ops team as they reunite to reflect on their experiences in the Vietnam War. Sadly, some of them didn’t live long enough to see the film, and after getting to know them and hearing their stories, you’ll be choking up seeing the notes on their passing in the end credits.
I tend to appreciate documentaries that contain micro and macro levels (and share that appreciation in my recommendations as a critic). Well, Soul Patrol feels like it does even more. It’s about Vietnam; then zooming in, it’s the story of Black America at the time; then zooming in further, it’s about Black soldiers in Vietnam, then this particular group, then each member of the group. The film reminds us that, beneath the generalizing, broad-scoped histories, each individual’s story is unique. Yet, every individual exists within the context of the world in which their story takes place. And there are multiple levels of context between the micro and macro extremes.
Soul Patrol flawlessly combines disparate documentary elements, including reenactments and judiciously selected archival footage. Plus, sequences of phantasmal encounters that could have easily come off as corny, but in the hands of director J.M. Harper, are stirring (I’m reminded of the “I Lied to You” sequence in Sinners, as it similarly shouldn’t work but does). Many people will think of Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods when hearing about and maybe even while watching parts of Soul Patrol, which only proves we need more movies centered on Black experiences and perspectives. Personally, I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like this documentary.
Give Me The Ball!
There were times when I felt like I had seen Liz Garbus and Elizabeth Wolff’s Give Me the Ball! before. It’s a conventional biographical documentary about Billie Jean King, albeit one where the subject seems to be at the wheel, given the way she is filmed in close-up, talking directly through the screen and telling her story rather than being interviewed (another Sundance film, The Baddest Speechwriter of All, frames and indulges its subject the same way). One extensively addressed part of her story is certainly familiar to viewers today thanks to the dramatic depiction of the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” match between King and Bobby Riggs in a 2017 biopic.
The documentary also especially recalls Sally, which premiered at Sundance just last year, partly because its subject, tennis legend Billie Jean King, was also in that film, and partly because it’s another tale of a Queer person who became famous at a time when being gay or bi, especially as a prominent figure idolized by children, was something to hide. What works differently and somewhat in its favor, while also less sad, is that, unlike Sally Ride, King is still alive and can talk about her life and identity on screen. King was also outed when she was at the peak of her celebrity, so we see exactly why it was unfortunately necessary for such figures to remain closeted then. But part of the need for this film is that King is more than just the lesbian tennis player.
Garbus and Wolff do something with Give Me the Ball! that breaks from the celebrity biography norm: they hold the applause to the end. They tell King’s story (with King doing most of the telling), and then, at the end, they bring in the complimentary guests spouting praise and discussing the subject’s importance. This plays more like a concluding epilogue, explaining that this whole story has led to this and to these people, mainly younger women tennis players, such as Serena Williams, who have benefited so much from how King changed her sport and women’s athletics in general, especially when it comes to widespread respect and financial compensation.
Ghost In The Machine
All this time, we’ve just been worrying about the rise of the machines as a replacement for humans, or at least our jobs. Valerie Veatch’s Ghost in the Machine gives us more reason to fear AI: the technology has origins in eugenics, and the industry is steeped in misogynistic elitism. The latter might not be as much of a surprise, but the documentary may shock viewers with its arguments that artificial intelligence is intrinsically racist and prone to fascism even before its current leaders direct it to be less “woke.”
Structurally, Ghost in the Machine is an effective, chaptered essay, even if its points may be narrow in their concerns. Aesthetically, there is more to be desired, only because the many talking heads providing their expertise on the matter appear via Zoom calls as if the documentary were made during the pandemic. I would think it better to present the human side of the film more directly, practically, and materially. Another visual issue comes with an otherwise sensible idea. Veatch adds a caption to every image, labeling it as either AI or not AI, but some of them seem incorrect. I think this is a substantial work, and I only wish that it had the appearance of one in order that it may be taken seriously.
Cookie Queens
Going into Alysa Nahmias’s Cookie Queens, I expected fluff, and for the most part, that seems to be how it’s been received. The documentary follows four Girl Scouts from various parts of the country as they sell cookies and learn about business and entrepreneurship. They’re all adorable, but their stories carry hints of an ugly truth about the Girl Scout Cookie trade. One girl pushes herself to break a sales record even while regularly stating that she’s not that into it anymore. Another displays a desire to be as good at selling cookies as her older sisters, who held records in their area. One struggling family is too ambitious and risks losing their own money in the fundraiser.
The film doesn’t implicate Girl Scouts of the USA in any of these pressures, but there is some light talk of the organization’s profit sharing and minimal incentives related to all this child labor that, by being included in the edit, relays that criticism. To the organization’s credit, perhaps, there’s also little discussion of what the cookie selling is meant to teach or empower in these kids. Only one of the young characters, a five-year-old with type-1 diabetes and a very modest sales goal, appears to be truly happy in her efforts, and when she does hit a challenge, she tackles it with the sort of enterprising ingenuity you’d hope to come out of being a member of an organization like Girl Scouts. And she does it altruistically, not to be the best. It may not be the point of the film, but it’s a good reminder of the importance of quality over quantity.
Seized
With so many documentaries focused on the importance of journalism and journalists lately, it’s fair and necessary that we get one about a rare small-town newspaper still in operation. Just as Americans should be paying more attention to their local governments, they should also be aware of what local media they might have. Sharon Liese’s Seized follows the story of a little print weekly in Marion, Kansas, that was raided by the police in a clear misuse of power. Since its premiere, we’ve seen prominent journalists arrested in protests simply for intimidation and for show, making this film even more relevant as a microcosmic spotlight on the larger concerns for the First Amendment and political corruption.
The only problem with Seized is that there are no characters that hold our interest. The guy who owns and runs the paper isn’t the greatest representative for the issue, and that might be why the film also follows a young reporter who is new to town and marginally involved in covering the continuing story. He’s just not enough of a part of the narrative or issue at hand to matter to the documentary, and the more we are made to engage with him as a character, the less focused the film feels. When he inexplicably leaves the town and the paper at the end, that weakens our investment even more. Still, the core scenario of Seized is worth a look, but for a tighter documentary about a small-scale media outlet, I recommend Bad Press.