Release Rundown: What to Watch in October, From Wicker to Once Upon a Time in Harlem

Olivia Colman stars in Wicker, which premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

By Ramona Flume

Fall is finally here. And now that there's a real chill in the air, it's prime time to curl up with something good to watch. Thankfully, our monthly release calendar is filling up fast, with 12 titles that premiered at the 2025 and 2026 Sundance Film Festivals arriving in theaters and on streamers between now and Halloween. (And just in time for spooky season - don't miss a remastered 4K restoration of Donnie Darko back on the big screen October 2 in honor of the 2001 Sundance Film Festival cult classic's 25th anniversary.)

Many of this month's films (nine of them documentaries) follow people who simply refuse to give up, and their persistence is infectious. Climbers attempt K2's first winter summit, a grieving father steadfastly searches a river for his missing son, a young Syrian refugee comes of age on camera over a decade, and a son completes his documentarian father's recordings of Harlem Renaissance icons 50 years later. Others revisit unfinished history to search for justice: Kenya's colonial-era land seizures, Leonard Peltier's contested conviction, and the unsolved 1985 killing of Palestinian American activist Alex Odeh. We also have the story behind a devoted producer on Wu-Tang Clan's one-of-a-kind album and a big-hearted portrait of comedian Maria Bamford.

On the narrative front, a teenager drifts through a restless New Zealand summer, John Turturro plays an old-school pickpocket in New York City, and Olivia Colman marries a man made of wicker.

The Last First: Winter K2 -Until 2021, K2 stood as the world's last 8,000-meter peak that had never been summited in the winter. When Pakistan reopened its borders in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, three separate expeditions - including one led by the record-breaking Nepali British mountaineer Nirmal Nims Purja - raced to change that distinction and claim first. Director Amir Bar-Lev builds his documentary, which premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, from footage the climbers shot on their brutal ascent, along with interviews with the survivors - widening the lens on the steep costs, both financial and human, of extreme mountaineering. Streaming on Apple TV October 2.

Big Girls Don't Cry - In a small New Zealand beach town in the summer of 2006, 14-year-old Sid (Ani Palmer) gravitates toward an older girl (Beatrix Rain Wolfe), starts sidling up to a rowdy crowd of local teens, and explores the early internet with no one to guide her - least of all her checked-out dad (Noah Taylor). In her first screen role, Palmer carries writer-director Paloma Schneideman's feature debut with remarkable restraint, capturing that restless in-between stretch when childhood feels too cramped and adulthood remains just out of reach. Big Girls Don't Cry premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Coming to select theaters October 9.

Kikuyu Land - For Kenya's Kikuyu people, land is identity. Yet much of their ancestral territory, seized under British colonial rule, is now covered by tea plantations owned by multinational corporations and a handful of wealthy Kenyans. When a court ruling opens a limited window to file historical land injustice claims, the descendants of those dispossessed get their first real shot at justice. Nairobi journalist Bea Wangondu, who co-directs this 2026 Festival documentary with Andrew H. Brown, follows families pursuing their claims while digging into her own family's past, weaving together archival footage and community testimony to shed light on a long-hidden chapter of Kenyan history. Coming to select theaters October 9.

Free Leonard Peltier - For nearly five decades, Leonard Peltier's imprisonment was a rallying cry for Indigenous rights around the world. Directors Jesse Short Bull and David France revisit the 1975 shootout on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation that led to the American Indian Movement activist's highly contested conviction, as well as the yearslong campaign for his release that followed. The film frames Peltier's case within the U.S. government's long, fraught history with Indigenous peoples and their individual and collective freedoms. Free Leonard Peltier premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Streaming on Netflix October 12.

The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable - Tarik Cilvaringz Azzougarh, a Dutch Moroccan Wu-Tang Clan superfan, went from being a faraway admirer to an inner circle collaborator and producer of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the notorious Wu-Tang album pressed as a single copy, sealed in a handcrafted silver box, and barred from commercial release for 88 years. Director Joanna Natasegara's 2026 Festival premiere documentary charts Cilvaringz's improbable connection to the group, the making of that one-of-a-kind record, and its contentious sale to disgraced pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli. Streaming on Netflix October 16.

Once Upon a Time in Harlem- Few parties are worth watching half a century after they've ended. This one is. In 1972, trailblazing documentarian William Greaves invited every surviving Harlem Renaissance figure he could find to Duke Ellington's Harlem townhouse - then let the cameras roll. Painter Aaron Douglas, artist Romare Bearden, poet Arna Bontemps, and photographer James Van Der Zee are among the guests swapping stories, debating ideas, and toasting the legacy of their movement. Completed more than 50 years later by Greaves' son and co-director, David Greaves, who was behind one of the cameras that day, this rare time capsule premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Coming to select theaters October 16.

The Only Living Pickpocket in New York - What's an old-school grifter to do in a city where hardly anyone carries cas

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