2026 opens with exciting new German cinema!

While the world’s attention turns to the Berlinale each February for the year’s most anticipated new German films, audiences in the US and Canada don’t need to wait to see their share of exciting German cinema. From major industry events like Sundance to insider favorites like Palm Springs, festivals across the region showcase works of all genres from established to emerging talents alike.

Read more about each festival below and check back for more as further festivals announce their lineups!

Palm Springs International Film Festival
January 2–12, 2026
Germany takes the spotlight in this year’s “Country Focus” section at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, with favorites like Sound of Falling and Miroirs No. 3 joining Albert Oehlen’s Udo Kier-led self-portrait Bad Painter, Michael Kofler’s 1960s family drama of political insurgency A Land Within, and Jan-Ole Gerster’s sun-washed Hitchcockian thriller Islands in the ten-film selection. The festival also hosts a special repertory screening of Konrad Wolf’s Stars in celebration of the East German director’s centennial.

Sundance Film Festival
January 22–February 1, 2026
This edition of the US’s most influential film festival includes Shame and Money by Germany-based Kosovar director Visar Morina (Exile) which follows a family forced to leave their village to eke out a life in the hyper-capitalist city, where instability pushes them to the limits of their dignity. Padraic McKinley’s directorial debut The Weight sees Ethan Hawke as a convict at a Depression-era Oregon work camp seeking to reunite with his daughter. The film, a major German production, was shot in the Bavarian forest.

At the festival’s awards ceremony on January 30, Shame and Money was presented with the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic! The jury noted Morina’s “powerful and unique portrayal of human dignity in contemporary Kosovo” and his “deep empathy for his characters in a crucial moment in which they are beginning again.”

South by Southwest
March 12–18, 2026
SXWS, the annual celebration of media and performance in Austin, TX, presents Stella Marie Markert’s darkly comic Thanks for Nothing starring Lea Drinda (Sound of Falling) and Jan Bülow (The Universal Theory) as part of a group of teenagers living in an anarchic group home of their own design and struggling against abandonment, disillusionment, and absurdity.