Nearly 250 movies will be screened at the 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival April 16 to 30, at the Oriental Theatre (2230 N. Farwell Ave.) and Downer Theatre (2589 N. Downer Ave.).
Some titles will be familiar to film buffs, from the return of the popular “Stop Making Sense” screening for instance, to the Buster Keaton silent film classic “The General” performed with live musical accompaniment. But the vast majority of films are brand new – so when it comes to picking your screenings, where should you start?
The Journal Sentinel features writing team pored through the festival program book, watched trailers, and in one case caught an early screening, to spotlight these five Milwaukee Film Festival movies we’re especially excited about. They’re listed in order of their first screenings.
Hannah Kirby’s Pick: “Ueck”
Not just any premiere is happening on opening night of the Milwaukee Film Festival. It’ll be the debut of a feature-length documentary that chronicles the life of one of the city’s largest legends. That would be the one and only Bob Uecker. Many fellow Milwaukeeans knew Mr. Baseball as the voice of the Brewers on the airwaves for more than a half-century, but he was also a former major leaguer himself, a film and television icon, and so much more.
When the production company September Club approached Uecker a few years ago about doing a documentary about him, “he was on board very quickly,” Michael Vollmann, one of the film’s directors and a fellow Milwaukee native, told the Journal Sentinel. It wouldn’t be long, though, before Uecker would receive his cancer diagnosis, according to Steve Farr, another local director of the doc. Uecker faced a private battle with small cell lung cancer since early 2023, his family said after his death in January 2025.
The goal of the film, called “Ueck,” was to portray him as who he really was, according to Vollmann. Nearly 30 people were interviewed for the documentary, Farr said. It’ll have a mix of fun, well-known stories, ones that haven’t been heard before, day-in-the-life footage and never-before-seen archival video, Vollmann said.
Showtimes: 7 and 8 p.m. April 16, Oriental Theatre.
Rachel Bernhard’s Pick: “Kings of Venice”
The Oriental Theatre was electric when I caught this enrapturing, hysterical sports documentary at Milwaukee Film’s March members screening. The audience was fist pumping, hooting and hollering as we cheered on a community of eccentrics devoted to the little-known sport of paddle tennis. The documentary follows the stranger-than-fiction cast of characters as they battle in a David vs. Goliath matchup against pickleball pros to protect their home courts on the famed Venice Beach boardwalk.
It’s “Bad News Bears” meets “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.” There are underdogs and sports gods. Harvard grads and Italian models. An octogenarian spending his retirement years on the court. And a fast-talking, hard-gambling former paddle tennis great who will stop at nothing to resurrect the dying sport (and polish his reputation).
This crowd-pleasing doc won the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature at the Slamdance Film Festival, the punk-rock sister to the legendary Sundance Film Festival. And I wouldn’t be shocked if it did that same here in Milwaukee.
Showtimes: 4:15 p.m. April 18, Downer Theatre; 5 p.m. April 29, Oriental Theatre.
Jim Higgin’s Pick: “The A List: 15 Stories from Asian and Pacific Diasporas”
Director Eugene Yi’s documentary explores a big question: What does it mean to be an Asian American / Pacific islander? Yi explores that identity with actor Sandra Oh, Army National Guard veteran and Sen. Tammy Duckworth, journalist Connie Chung, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, comedian Kumail Nanjiani and others. Yi uses interviews, archival footage and other techniques to tell their stories.
Showtimes: 7 p.m. April 18, Downer Theatre; 4:45 p.m. April 19, Oriental Theatre.
Anya Sesay’s Pick: “The Fisherman”
Atta Oko, a Ghanaian fisherman, guided wholly by tradition and weary of modern technological advancement, is forced into retirement by a world moving on without him. In this surrealist comedy Oko finds a snarky, talking fish out of water who takes him on a journey to Accra, accompanied by three young boys who share Oko’s dream of owning a boat.
Director Zoey Martinson pairs vivid shots of sun-kissed melanin, bright textiles and the African coast with the dry humor of a hard-headed African elder.
“The Fisherman” seems to promise a reminder about the power of all great cinema: bringing audiences into a world they may otherwise never have known through universal languages. In this case, laughter, unlikely friendships, deferred dreams and vibrant cinematography.
Showtimes: 9:30 p.m. April 20, Downer Theatre; 6:00 p.m. April 25, Oriental Theatre.
Piet Levy’s Pick: “Power Ballad”
“Once” is one of my favorite musicals of all time, and one of my favorite movies about music, a low-budget gem overflowing with feeling and moving songs (including the Oscar-worthy-and-winning “Falling Slowly” and goosebump-inducing “When Your Mind’s Made Up”). Its director John Carney has continued making slice-of-life stories, often centered around music, but early reviews of his latest “Power Ballad” suggest it’s his best movie since his breakthrough, with Carney switching up his typical bonding through music storyline to pit a has been pop star (Nick Jonas) against a never-been wannabe rocker (Paul Rudd), when the former steals a song from the latter that becomes a huge hit.
Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. April 30, Oriental Theatre.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Five movies we’re excited about at the 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival
Reporting by Rachel Bernhard, Jim Higgins, Hannah Kirby, Piet Levy and Anya Sesay, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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