The first half of 2026 has delivered a remarkable array of cinematic gems, from dark comedies and historical dramas to gripping documentaries and horror-thrillers. Here is our curated selection of the best films that have graced UK screens so far this year.
Song Sung Blue
Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson star in this sweet and surprising film about a Neil Diamond tribute act. The story follows a Milwaukee married couple as they rise to fame with a real-life band called Lightning and Thunder. Our review called it 'a startlingly strange, undeniably entertaining true-life story from the heartland of American showbusiness; a lovable crowdpleaser whose feelgood flavour won’t prepare you for the way the plot repeatedly and savagely twists like an unsafe fairground ride.'
Hamnet
Chloé Zhao directs Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley in this adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s myth-making novel. The film reimagines the agonising loss of a child as the source of Hamlet’s grand stage drama. We noted that Buckley gives 'an unselfconsciously beguiling performance... every look and smile a piercing significance.'
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
The fourth instalment in the 28 franchise is the finest yet, featuring a murderous Clockwork Orangey gang taking on zombies. Our reviewer highlighted Fiennes’s dance to Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast as 'one of the most extraordinary moments of his career,' prompting audiences to stand and headbang.
The Voice of Hind Rajab
Kaouther Ben Hania’s fierce docufiction reconstructs the killing of a five-year-old in Gaza using her real voice as she is bombarded by the Israeli army. The film uses 'startling audacity' by combining the real audio recording with fictional reconstructions of emergency responders.
No Other Choice
Park Chan-wook delivers a sensational state-of-the-nation satire about an unemployed paper worker who hatches a cunning plan to murder his way back into the job market. The film starts as an Ealing comedy-type caper and morphs into a portrait of family dysfunction and fragile masculinity.
Primate
Johannes Roberts’ brief, brutal creature feature offers unpretentious B-movie fun as a pet chimp gone wild. Roberts, known for hit shark thriller 47 Metres Down, is 'at his savviest and most ruthlessly efficient here, a confident levelling up for a genre film-maker finding his sweet spot.'
Hamlet
Riz Ahmed plays a tortured prince in Aneil Karia’s intelligent retelling set in a shady family business. The film offers an austerely challenging reading, far from the richly empathetic approach of Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet.
André Is an Idiot
A riotously funny and painfully honest film about facing death, where a cancer diagnosis becomes a catalyst for gallows humour and emotional openness. The team found a relatively fresh way to tackle the subject of cancer.
Twinless
James Sweeney’s dark, inventive comedy mixes genres and tones, veering from funny to creepy to devastatingly sad. Sweeney 'makes his confounding and psychologically complicated film glide,' confronting uncomfortable truths about queer identity.
My Father’s Shadow
Akinola Davies Jr’s directorial debut is a subtle coming-of-age story set in 1990s Nigeria about an absent father briefly reunited with his two young sons. The film explores whether absence is love.
It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley
Amy Berg’s documentary offers a sympathetic look at the life and death of the 90s singer-songwriter, with contributions from his mother and girlfriends. It highlights his superb vocal range inspired by Nina Simone and Judy Garland.
The President’s Cake
This film follows a nine-year-old tasked with making a birthday cake for Saddam Hussein. The cake-tasting itself turns out to be 'an explosively important climax.'
Crime 101
Chris Hemsworth and Barry Keoghan star in this stylish armed robbery thriller about a master thief. The movie revs the engine entertainingly, though it is less convincing in its social commentary.
Man on the Run
A welcome archival delve into Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles era, showing him embodying a strange, stylised sense of uncool. The film is engaging, with McCartney’s face 'cherubic, and yet sharp and watchful.'
Fukushima
A devastating account of the 2011 nuclear catastrophe, foregrounding the heroism of the 'Fukushima 50' while questioning corporate secrecy and nuclear safety. The film plunges into the story moment-by-moment with interviews.
Wasteman
This Brit prison drama is brutally violent and gripping, sidestepping cliches with committed acting. The scene of an overcrowded jail is seen through a smartphone screen.
The Secret Agent
Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Brazilian drama follows an academic on the run in the 1970s, a novelistic study of corruption. Its visual brilliance and sensual intrigue combine to create something special.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Rose Byrne is tremendous in this pitch-black horror-comedy as a therapist pushed to the edge by parenting stress. The film features banal problems of childcare instead of supernatural apparitions.
Soul to Soul
A restored 1971 concert film captures Black American stars’ return to Ghana for an independence day show, with electrifying performances from Tina Turner and Wilson Pickett.
Sound of Falling
Mascha Schilinski’s story of intergenerational angst and national guilt is told in four timeframes in a German farmhouse. The film has a clammy unease, like a ghost story or folk-horror.
The Bride!
Jessie Buckley is electrifying as the monster’s wife married to Christian Bale’s lonely creature in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s darkly comic reimagining of Bride of Frankenstein. The film is a rackety, violent black comedy with twists of Rocky Horror and homages to Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein.
Everybody to Kenmure Street
This inspiring documentary retells the 2021 Glasgow protest where community stood against immigration enforcement. It shows how domineering policing can be countered by insistence on justice.
The Good Boy
Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough turn nasty in this wicked tale of a couple who plan to retrain a delinquent teen with a brutal regimen. The movie feels like something from the age of Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange.
Midwinter Break
Ciarán Hinds and Lesley Manville star in this sad, spiky portrait of rupture and rapture in late middle age. The film creates space for intimate, complex performances.
Dead Man’s Wire
Gus Van Sant directs a surreal true-crime thriller with Al Pacino, Colman Domingo, and Myha’la, about an Indianapolis businessman who held his mortgage broker hostage in 1977.
La Grazia
Paolo Sorrentino rediscovers his voice with Toni Servillo playing a president looking back on a career of empty rectitude. It is a dry comedy of grief and regret.
Pompei: Below the Clouds
Gianfranco Rosi’s documentary mosaic of Naples possesses an end-of-days quality, covering war, violence, and climate crisis. The city seems to be preparing its own Pompeii destiny.
Redoubt
Denis Lavant is unforgettable as an oddball building a public shelter for an obscure disaster in John Skoog’s monochrome film. Lavant demonstrates accordion skills and the ability to hypnotise a chicken.
Two Prosecutors
Sergei Loznitsa’s portrait of Stalinist insurrection is a haunting parable of bureaucratic evil, with slow scenes mimicking the zombie existence of the Soviet state.
The Magic Faraway Tree
Claire Foy and Andrew Garfield star in this spruced-up adaptation of Enid Blyton’s children’s classic, a thoroughly likable family fantasy with sharp gags.
Kim Novak’s Vertigo
An intensely personal interview with the 92-year-old Hollywood star reveals the dizzying demands on Hitchcock’s leading lady and addresses how society imposes male views on women.
D Is for Distance
A tender portrait of parents battling for their son’s medical cannabis to stop his epileptic seizures, as film-makers Chris Petit and Emma Matthews fight the NHS’s refusal.
The Drama
Zendaya and Robert Pattinson’s controversial wedding film delivers on its promise, with a woman’s confession causing uproar. It is a Euro-satire in the spirit of Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure.
The Stranger
François Ozon’s modern take on the Camus classic honours the original text while bringing a contemporary perspective to themes of empire and race. Meursault emerges as the violent endpoint of imperialism.
Father Mother Sister Brother
Jim Jarmusch’s delectable triptych with Cate Blanchett and Charlotte Rampling explores the awkwardness of parents with grownup children in three slyly comic panels. The film offers contentment and Zen simplicity.
Miroirs No 3
Christian Petzold’s elegantly unnerving mystery of grief and family dysfunction stars Paula Beer as a depressed pianist. The film heads towards something positive and redemptive.
Exit 8
A commuter’s entrapment in an Escher-esque subway station leads to a disquieting psychological mystery. The film is a rare adaptation that holds close to the video game, crushing in its portrayal of modern non-places.
Rose of Nevada
Mark Jenkin’s enigmatic ghost ship story about a vanished trawler returns, steeped in loss and memory. The film feels like a found object, evoking the lost physical reality of celluloid.
Ada: My Mother the Architect
Yael Melamede presents an illuminating profile of Israeli architect Ada Karmi-Melamede, balancing life and work, touching on a painful family split and gender dynamics in academia.
Kokuho
Lee Sang-il’s heartfelt kabuki epic spans 50 years, following the bond and rivalry between two young men who play female roles in traditional Japanese art. The action is interspersed with kabuki performances.
Romería
Carla Simón’s gripping pilgrimage follows a young woman to meet the family of her dead father, uncovering secrets about his life and death. Simón immerses herself in freewheeling family scenes.
Our Land
Orban Wallace’s documentary about right-to-roam campaigners offers bacchanalian antics and a heartfelt message, avoiding big clashes between landowners and campaigners.
The Christophers
Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel are the double act of the year in Steven Soderbergh’s brilliant comedy about a reclusive painter and the former art student hired to find his missing masterworks. The film is 'terrifically exhilarating and funny, as bracing as a large vodka and tonic before lunch.'
Northern Soul: Still Burning
A passionate portrait of the legendary Wigan Casino club scene and its amphetamine-fuelled all-nighters, highlighting a unique cultural moment and its obsessive fans.
Obsession
Curry Barker’s frighteningly effective cautionary tale about a wish for true love gone wrong uses elements of a classic fable and 1980s schlock.
Eagles of the Republic
Tarik Saleh’s third film in his Cairo trilogy is a seductive thriller about a washed-up movie star bullied into starring in government propaganda, with a rackety, despairing, funny tone.
Hen
György Pálfi’s weirdly uplifting survival story about a plucky chicken coaxes a tour de force from its poultry cast, empathising with the avian heroine without anthropomorphic sentimentalism.
Backrooms
Kane Parsons’ debut horror examines memory and reality as Chiwetel Ejiofor accesses an infinite series of hidden rooms. The film progressively raises its game with jump scares and shiver scares.
Tuner
Leo Woodall plays a piano tuner with super-sensitive hearing, and his relationship with Dustin Hoffman is a tender highlight in this safe-cracking thriller, mixing romcom moments with a relaxed crime thriller.
Power Ballad
Nick Jonas and Paul Rudd star in John Carney’s terrific comedy of bromance and betrayal. The film brilliantly brings together Rudd’s washed-up wedding singer and Jonas’s insecure ex-boyband superstar, exploring the binary of success and failure.
