New Hampshire Film Festival 2026 Wrap-Up

It would appear that the New Hampshire Film Festival is going through an identity crisis.

The 25-year-old, four-day festival in Portsmouth, NH was purchased by local music venue The Music Hall a couple years back, and its programming has been shifting ever since. Gone is the first day's spotlighting of local talent, replaced by the buzziest titles out of Cannes and Sundance. Far more of the features are from or feature established talents. The "closing night" ceremony is timed to overlap with other screenings, and was split into two non-contiguous chunks this year. Even the end-of-the-day spotlight screenings are getting less compelling; I find myself at one of the alternative presentations more often (when one exists).

Given my love of "finding" indie directors and cult actors (exemplified by Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie), I wasn't the most excited heading into this year's festival.

Fortunately, much of what I saw was worthy of mention. They didn't always meet my expectations, and there were certainly a handful of stinkers in the bunch. I came out with scant few discoveries, but also a reaffirmation of my love for a handful of directors and performers, and an addition to my current top ten on the year. I saw a few friends, met a few more, and had a great time. So despite my apprehensions going in, it all worked out.

As such, all the films mentioned below I loved to one degree or another. So if you have the chance to see them, well, go see them!

Documentary Features

Once Upon a Time in Harlem

The late writer/director William Greaves is a fascinating figure. He was quite important in the independent film movement in the second half of the 20th century, directing dozens upon dozens, many concerning the experience of race and class in America, especially regarding black people. He directed well over one hundred films to that effect (some sources say over two hundred), although few were feature length, which may have contributed to his relative obscurity amongst even the cinefile crowd today. By far his best known is Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, a metanarrative film that plays with and interrogates the line between narrative and documentary and the impossibility of telling them apart. Cruelly, it failed to find distribution upon completion in 1968, and was stuck only occasionally screening on the festival circuit until the early 2000s.

Once Upon a Time in Harlem was also shot decades ago and is just now being released for the first time, albeit by his choice rather than other's disinterest. In 1971, he gathered the surviving luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance for a four hour cocktail party, filming all of it, occasionally gathering the constituents so he could spark conversation on a certain topic. Originally intended to be used in another film, the footage sat on a shelf for decades as he could never figure out how to finish it, despite considering it his greatest work. Upon his passing about ten years ago, his late widow and then their children worked to finish it.

The result places you in the middle of that room half a century ago, immersed in the conversations of these brilliant minds, still sharp as a tack after all these years, including 96-year-old Leigh Whipper. It's free flowing and unconcerned with grand narrative, although he occasionally pulls one or two of them aside for a contextual interviews to dig deeper. Heavy ideas are discussed and debated, fault lines are litigated with passion, and there's no clear consensus (even on some facts). It's a wonderfully messy experience, one where the words matter much less than the atmosphere, the characters that emerge. It's as beautiful and timely as ever, even as his important work of cultural preservation came just in time to catch so many big names before they left this mortal coil.

US Release Status: Currently in limited release.

Honorable Mentions: Joybubbles

Narrative Features

Mouse

In her second feature length screenplay, writer Kelly O’Sullivan has grown a lot. Which is saying something, because her first was 2024's Ghostlight, a very successful if imperfect indie film that got some well-deserved attention. It was also her initial directorial team-up with Alex Thompson, and the first time they worked on film with the Kupferer/Mallen family (mother, father, and daughter). All return here, with the exception of Keith, who was the lead last time, but I guess was too busy making Night Nurse. No matter; despite being underserved by that script, Katherine Mallen Kupferer demonstrated her considerable skill, and brings all of that to bear even more powerfully with much stronger writing as the lead of Mouse.

It's another story of the complicated ways we deal with grief, but focused on the ways cathartic experiences can turn toxic. The movie takes its time, building the incredibly tight bond between Minnie (Kupferer) and Callie (Chloe Coleman), demonstrating part of what makes them so perfect for each other is their complimentary skill sets and personalities. So when a freak car accident kills Callie to start the summer, Minnie feels like she has to "pick up the slack". We jump forward to the start of her senior year of high school, and ride along with Minnie as the pressure and frustration gently ratchets up, driving her to spend more and more time with Callie's mother (Sophie Okenado), whose already immense grief is made all the more lonely by her impending divorce.

While you can guess the rough plot beats without too much trouble, it's the execution that makes this a special film. Okenado has been doing excellent work for a while now, and her performance here is no different. But it's Kupferer who really steps up, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that she has the chops to carry a feature. While the whole film is emotional, and the final act even more so, it's her ability to soften her demeanor and write her inner life all over her face that truly destroys you. It elevates a simple scene that cross-cuts between her and Callie's mom simultaneously being forced to confront their grief head-on from an interesting juxtaposition to showstopping centerpiece.

US Release Status: Nov 6, 2026 (limited); Nov 13, 2026 (wide)

Minotaur

Minotaur unfolds very slowly and deliberately, its focus spread across a few plotlines that reinforce each other, despite their connections remaining somewhat abstract for much of the runtime. It's mid or late 2022, and as the executive of a major company in a small Russian city, Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov) must put together a list of employees he can afford to lose to the draft, ensuring the thought of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is never far from our minds. At the same time, his marriage to Galina (Iris Lebedeva) is in disarray, and his suspects she's cheating on him. No mind that he's apparently had "girlfriends" in the past; her lover risks humiliating him, so he endeavors to learn more while he ponders what to do about it.

While the film is understated from start to finish, there's a steady ratcheting up of tensions, ensuring that you never get bored on account of never lacking intrigue. A cold war of sorts emerges between the couple, and all the while we witness Gleb stressing about how to handle being asked to send skilled men, many of them young, off to war. The war and general aggression of Russian society is juxtaposed with how he instructs his son, Seryozha (Boris Kudrin), to deal with a bully by getting in his face and threatening him, but to never throw the first punch. The more his discovers about his wife's affair and her lover, the more conflicted we understand him to be about taking his own advice.

What holds this film back is some of the clunkier, more overt connections it draws, and its refusal to end to make them. Do we really need to sit with the men of all ages being sent off to war for so long? Or to witness the billboard changeover? Or the clouds? Don't get me wrong, these moments are not meaningless, but I'm not sure dragging out the film for an additional twenty minutes past what would have made for a powerful resolution was the best use of our time in a film already over two hours long.

US Release Status: Nov 20, 2026 (scale unknown, although presumably limited)

Their Town

What begins as a fairly standard high school drama turns into a cozy New England riff on Before Sunrise, focused more on the minutiae of their lives and the complications of growing up rather than the grand philosophies of life that are as yet out of their reach.

Not that the plot is all that surprising once it's in motion. Shy, reserved Matthew (Chosen Jacobs) is conscripted to co-lead the school play with Abby (Ora Duplass) when her volatile boyfriend Tyler (Will Atticus Parker) suddenly drops out, so she insists they get together that evening to rehearse. It turns into a sprawling journey as they wander the streets of Bangor until the break of dawn, slowly opening up to each other as incursions of the outside world raise questions about who they really are.

After an uninspired start, this Duplass-family vanity project (penned by Mark, co-produced with his brother, starring his daughter, and directed by his wife) reveals its true colors, blossoming into an immensely moving tale of two people not so much finding each other as finding what they need. They consistently surprise each other and the audience with each new detail we learn, painting a broad and complex yet grounded picture of these teenagers. There were quite a few immensely affecting monologues that had me in tears, as well as the indelible and unique finale, so absurdly simple and even corny in its construction, but devastatingly beautiful and disarming in its execution. Ora proves to be an excellent actor worthy of a leading role despite nepotism, but its Jacobs who truly stuns in an immensely sensitive and layered performance.

US Release Status: looking for distribution

Look Back

Faithfully adapting anime to live action is tough, but 2024's Look Back (itself adapted from a 2021 manga) is the perfect source material. It's a quiet, emotional story of two girls who find each other through drawing manga for their school newspaper. Middle schooler Fujino (Fuuri Nanase) makes goofy, bombastic four-panel strips, while home-schooled Kyomoto (Rokka Okada) draws lovely, liminal backgrounds. The flap of a butterfly's wings brings them together, and we witness as their relationship and artistry grow in concert as they age (and are eventually played by Natsuki Deguchi and Aju Makita, respectively).

It ultimately becomes a piece about treasuring the time you have together, about grief, about moving on while refusing to ever forget someone, whether separated by the metaphysical or just hundreds of miles. We're treated to what could have been, and left to wonder what exactly it means.

That writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda's adaptation is almost twice as long as its anime counterpart gives the story and the emotions more time to breathe, allowing them to land a lot harder. In neither version do you get a notably complex portrait of the girls, so we lean on their passion and interaction to understand them. And although many of the plot beats are the same, the extra filler in this version makes room for it to better sink in.

US Release Status: Acquired by GKIDS; release date TBA

Honorable Mentions: Rose; Act One; The Diary of a Chambermaid

If you want my thoughts on all of the 26 shorts and features I watched, check out my Letterboxd.