The 2026 Sundance Film Festival was a particularly bittersweet entry in the long-running cinematic event. Not only was it the first iteration since the death of its legendary founder, Robert Redford, but it was also the last to take place in its long-time home of Park City, Utah, with next year moving to Boulder, Colorado. However, the spirit of Sundance was not dampened, as critics and other attendees were treated to an impressive selection of features from new and established voices alike, from the acclaimed Grand Jury and Audience Award winner Josephine starring Channing Tatum to the starry The Invite, which A24 snapped up for a pretty penny. Among the standouts was the feature directorial debut of Paloma Schneideman, Big Girls Don’t Cry, which still owns a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Set in idyllic rural New Zealand in 2006, Big Girls Don’t Cry tells the coming-of-age story of a 14-year-old named Sid Bookman, played by newcomer Ani Palmer. During a summer break in the age of instant messaging, Sid finds herself seeking the validation and attention of a group of older girls amid her own blossoming sexual curiosity, losing sight of who she really is at heart in the process. Enter The Summer I Turned Pretty star Rain Spencer, who plays her older sister’s new American friend, Freya, who has a unique understanding of Sid and notices the path of destruction she’s going down in trying to get in with the cutthroat clique. Ahead of its theatrical release, Collider can exclusively share the official trailer, teasing the growing pains ahead as Sid explores her desires.
At the start of the footage, Sid looks lost in her rural New Zealand home, unsure of what to do with her Christmas break. Her desire to mingle with the cool, wealthy, out-of-town teens hanging out at the pool and having fun in the sun spurs her to message her crush, imagining herself as part of her circle. Once the effortlessly captivating Freya arrives, though, she starts to break out of her shell, finding someone willing to get to really know her even as she starts wading into the party scene where she’s pushed into uncomfortable territory. While she undoubtedly makes memories, Sid also finds herself up against her artist father, who struggles to understand what’s going through her head, and her own queer adolescent awkwardness and recklessness, as she embraces other identities to fit in and creates chaos along the way. It’s Freya, however, that reminds her who actually cares about her. Between her best friend, Freya, and the vicious crowd she falls in with, she’s bound for a transformative, messy summer wrestling with who she is and who she pretends to be.
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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
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🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
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01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
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02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
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03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
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04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
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05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
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06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
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07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
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08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
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09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
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10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
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The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
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Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
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Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
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Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
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No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
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‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ Has Been a Darling on the Festival Circuit
Rounding out the main cast of Big Girls Don’t Cry as Sid’s father is Game of Thrones alum Noah Taylor, with Beatrix Rain Wolfe, Ngataitangirua Hita, and Sophia Kirkwood Smith among the supporting group. The LGBTQ+ drama emerged from the A Wave in the Ocean program created by two-time Oscar-winning The Power of the Dogdirector Jane Campion, who also served as an executive producer. Since its Sundance debut, it has only continued to make a splash at other film festivals, even winning top honors at the Biarritz Film Festival. Collider’s Taylor Gates hailed Schneideman’s debut in her 8/10 review, highlighting Palmer’s breakout turn and saying “The performances, combined with the dreamy score and stunning visuals, elevate the coming-of-age tale into something special.”
Big Girls Don’t Cry arrives in theaters this October. Check out the exclusive trailer in the player above.
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