This Summer is going to be a great one for movie and film fans - especially 4K and Blu-Ray Physical Media Lovers! Here's every Criterion Collection Release Coming Summer 2026!

There are Criterion announcement months… and then there are Criterion announcement seasons. Summer 2026 somehow became a four-month run of landmark restorations, contemporary auteurs, politically urgent documentaries, emotionally devastating family dramas, radical queer cinema, Japanese New Wave nihilism and at least three films guaranteed to make Film Threads collectively spiral for a week straight.

Which feels very on-brand for Criterion.

What makes this slate fascinating isn’t just the obvious prestige titles. Sure, you’ve got Akira Kurosawa, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, John Waters, Bob Fosse, and Neil Jordan all entering the conversation. But Criterion also continues doing the thing they do better than almost anyone else in physical media: treating cinema history like a living, interconnected dialogue instead of a nostalgia vault.

These releases speak to each other. Isolation. Labor. Desire. Colonialism. Family trauma. Identity. Social rebellion. Emotional collapse. Casual summer vibes.

And yeppers, I absolutely spent an unreasonable amount of time reading every special feature listing because this is who I am now.

So here’s a complete breakdown of every Criterion Collection release arriving this Summer 2026 - including official film descriptions and all announced special features. You know I friggin LOVE special features. 

Criterion Collection Titles: MAY 2026

STRAY DOG

Release Date: May 5, 2026
Formats: 4K Ultra HD + Blu-Ray • Blu-Ray • DVD

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop’s and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination ofMurakami’s own dark side. Starring Toshiro Mifune as the rookie cop and Takashi Shimura as the seasoned detective who keeps him on the right side of the law, Stray Dog goes beyond crime thriller, probing the squalid world of postwar Japan and the nature of the criminal mind. Get it on Amazon here!

Special Features

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary by Stephen Prince, author of The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa
• Short documentary on Stray Dog, from the series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create, featuring interviews with director Akira Kurosawa, production designer Yoshiro Muraki, actor Keiko Awaji, and others
• PLUS: An essay by film critic Terrence Rafferty and an excerpt from Kurosawa’s book Something Like an Autobiography

THE DELTA

Release Date: May 12, 2026
Formats: Blu-Ray

The complexities of race, class, and sexuality collide within a Memphis community in the strikingly raw debut feature from director Ira Sachs. With neorealist immediacy, The Delta tells what at first appears to be a simple love story: two young men—Lincoln (Shayne Gray), a closeted white teenager, and Minh (Thang Chan), a Black Vietnamese immigrant—meet at a cruising spot and embark on a nighttime journey by boat down the Mississippi River. But soon, imbalances of power and privilege emerge between them, as the film develops into a devastating vision of lost, wounded souls reaching out in the dark for human connection. Get it on Amazon here!

Special Features

• New 2K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Ira Sachs, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Audio commentary from 2001 featuring Sachs
• New interview with Sachs, conducted by film critic Keith Uhlich
• Two short films by Sachs: Vaudeville (1991) and Lady (1993)
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by author and film curator Michael Koresky

PETER HUJAR’S DAY

Release Date: May 12, 2026
Formats: Blu-Ray • DVD

A loving snapshot of a vanished New York, director Ira Sachs’s captivating cultural time capsule is a warm, witty, graceful re-creation of a real-life conversation that took place between photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) and writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) in 1974. Peter Hujar’s Day eavesdrops on the two friends’ leisurely, affectionate hangout as Hujar recounts his previous day’s activities, offering insights into both his art and his everyday life. What emerges is a touching celebration of creativity, connection, and simply being present, made exceptionally vivid by Sachs’s cinematic flourishes and wonderfully tender performances from Whishaw and Hall, whose chemistry gives the film its heart and soul.

Includes

• Meet the Filmmakers: Ira Sachs, a Criterion Channel original interview
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Notes by author and film curator Michael Koresky

BODY HEAT

Release Date: May 19, 2026
Formats: 4K Ultra HD + Blu-Ray • Blu-Ray

With his debut feature, acclaimed writer-director Lawrence Kasdan brilliantly updated the conventions of 1940s film noir for the 1980s, resulting in one of the steamiest and most influential erotic thrillers ever made. On the sultry South Florida coast, lawyer Ned Racine (William Hurt) is drawn into a torrid affair with unhappily married housewife Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner, in a star-making performance)—and it’s not long before they’ve hatched a scheme to murder her wealthy husband. Featuring ingenious plot twists, memorable hard-boiled dialogue, and an atmosphere so evocative you can practically feel the humidity, Body Heat is a languorously seductive tale of greed and desire, one that paved a new path for American crime cinema. Get it on Amazon here!

Special Features

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised by editor Carol Littleton and approved by director Lawrence Kasdan, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack
• Alternate 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• New interview with Kasdan
• New conversation between Littleton and film historian Bobbie O’Steen
• Archival programs featuring Kasdan; Littleton; actors William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, and Ted Danson; cinematographer Richard H. Kline; and composer John Barry
• Deleted scenes
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by author Megan Abbott

FRESH KILL

Release Date: May 19, 2026
Formats: Blu-Ray

A disturbingly prescient ecofeminist parable and a brain-wave-scrambling cyberpunk fantasia, the debut feature from new-media pioneer Shu Lea Cheang merges a bold vision of resistance with an exuberant early-internet aesthetic. In a dystopian-chic New York where sushi joints and toxic-waste sites exist side by side, a lesbian couple (Sarita Choudhury and Erin McMurtry) turn to the hacker underground to solve their daughter’s disappearance, in the process exposing a conspiracy involving corporate greenwashing and tainted fish. Swinging between outré satire and agitprop, Fresh Killsounds the alarm about a capitalist system that pollutes everything from our waterways to our bodies to our minds. Get it on Amazon here!

Special Features

• New 4K restoration, supervised and approved by director Shu Lea Cheang and director of photography Jane Castle, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• New interviews with Cheang and actor Sarita Choudhury
• New program highlighting the 2024 theatrical rerelease of the film and Cheang’s self-distribution
• Discussion with Cheang for the film’s thirtieth anniversary, moderated by scholar Jigna Desai, and presented by the Carsey-Wolf Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara
• LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative profile of Cheang, recipient of the organization’s 2024 award for artist achievement
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by artist and technologist Mindy Seu

LENNY

Release Date: May 26, 2026
Formats: 4K Ultra HD + Blu-Ray • Blu-Ray

Director Bob Fosse’s nervy, freewheeling showbiz drama tells the real-life story of taboo-shattering comedian Lenny Bruce, the counterculture prophet whose unfiltered style opened up new frontiers in self-expression. Dustin Hoffman brings a live-wire intensity to his portrayal of the motormouthed Bruce as he goes from small-time strip-club emcee to free-speech lightning rod, while Valerie Perrine lends the film its soul with her deeply affecting performance as his wife, Honey, an innocent lost on the dark side of bohemia. A complex portrayal of one iconoclast by another, Fosse’s film makes deft use of stark monochrome photography and kinetic editing to vividly capture Bruce’s smoky, seedy backstage world. Get it on Amazon here!

Special Features

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary from 2015 featuring film historians Nick Redman and Julie Kirgo
• Archival interview with actors Dustin Hoffman and Valerie Perrine
• Interview with editor Alan Heim
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Mark Harris and a 1975 interview with director Bob Fosse

SENTIMENTAL VALUE

Release Date: May 26, 2026
Formats: 4K Ultra HD + Blu-Ray • Blu-Ray • DVD

Joachim Trier, one of contemporary cinema’s great humanists, excavates layers of history and memory—both national and personal—for this rich, ineffably moving story of one family’s attempts to come to terms with generations of trauma and healing. After the death of their mother, two sisters must contend with the return home to Norway of their estranged father, celebrated filmmaker Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård). In the case of Nora (Renate Reinsve), an actor, he hopes to reconnect by casting her in his new film—a project that both inflicts fresh wounds and reopens old ones. With a virtuoso ensemble cast that also includes Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (in a breakout performance) and Elle Fanning, Trier’s film delicately balances each moment of humor and hurt, conducting a stunning emotional exploration of how the past echoes in the present and art can transform pain into catharsis. Get it on Amazon here!

Special Features

• New 4K digital master, approved by director Joachim Trier, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• New conversation between Trier and filmmaker Mike Mills
• New selected-scene commentaries by Trier, coscreenwriter Eskil Vogt, production designer Jørgen Stangebye Larsen, and sound designer Gisle Tveito
• New interviews with actors Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, and Elle Fanning
• Deleted scenes
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by author Karl Ove Knausgård

Criterion Collection Titles: JUNE 2026

Can we talk about Criterion casually dropping Charade, Five Easy Pieces, High Art, Hairspray and a Palme d’Or-winning Jafar Panahi film into the same month like that’s emotionally normal behavior?

Because it is NOT.

CHARADE

Street Date: June 2, 2026
Formats: 4K UHD + Blu-ray

In this comedic thriller, a trio of crooks relentlessly pursue a young American, played by Audrey Hepburn in gorgeous Givenchy, through Paris in an attempt to recover the fortune her dead husband stole from them. The only person she can trust is Cary Grant’s suave, mysterious stranger. Get it on Amazon here!

Special Features

• NEW 4K RESTORATION OF THE FILM
• Audio commentary from 1999 featuring director Stanley Donen and screenwriter Peter Stone
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by film historian Bruce Eder

FIVE EASY PIECES

Street Date: June 2, 2026
Formats: 4K UHD + Blu-ray

Following Jack Nicholson’s breakout supporting turn in Easy Rider, director Bob Rafelson devised a powerful leading role for the new star in the searing character study Five Easy Pieces. Nicholson plays the now iconic cad Bobby Dupea, a shiftless thirtysomething oil rigger and former piano prodigy immune to any sense of responsibility, who returns to his upper-middle-class childhood home, blue-collar girlfriend (Karen Black, in an Oscar-nominated role) in tow, to see his estranged, ailing father. Moving in its simplicity and gritty in its textures, Five Easy Pieces is a lasting example of early-1970s American alienation. Get it on Amazon here!

Special Features

• NEW 4K RESTORATION OF THE FILM
• DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
• Audio commentary by director Bob Rafelson and interior designer Toby Rafelson
• Soul Searching in “Five Easy Pieces,” a 2009 program featuring Bob Rafelson
• BBStory, a documentary about the legendary film company BBS Productions, with Rafelson; actors Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, and Ellen Burstyn; filmmakers Peter Bogdanovich and Henry Jaglom; and others
• Documentary featuring critic David Thomson and historian Douglas Brinkley
• Audio excerpts from a 1976 AFI interview with Rafelson
• Trailer and teasers
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Kent Jones

HIGH ART

Street Date: June 16, 2026
Formats: Blu-ray

In a revelatory performance, Ally Sheedy stars in writer-director Lisa Cholodenko’s debut feature, a wry and incisive look at the politics of the New York art scene wrapped in the guise of an emotionally spiky queer romance. When Lucy Berliner (Sheedy), a once prominent photographer who has retreated into a life of heroin abuse with her faded-actress lover (Patricia Clarkson), is rediscovered by Syd (Radha Mitchell), an up-and-coming editor at a photography magazine, professional ambition and personal attraction become dangerously entwined. Stripping away art-world glamour to tell a seductive yet troubling story of complicated human connection, High Art stands as an essential work of both queer and 1990s independent cinema. Get it on Amazon here!

Special Features

• NEW 4K RESTORATION OF THE FILM, supervised and approved by director Lisa Cholodenko, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• Audio commentary from 2004 featuring Cholodenko
• New conversation between Cholodenko and filmmaker Karyn Kusama
• New interviews with actors Ally Sheedy and Radha Mitchell and photographer JoJo Whilden
• Dinner Party (1997), a short film by Cholodenko
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic B. Ruby Rich

DESPERATE LIVING

Street Date: June 23, 2026
Formats: 4K UHD + Blu-ray

Following the unrepentant outrageousness of Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble, director John Waters brought his notorious trash trilogy to a fittingly twisted close with this antifascist fairy tale. After hysterical housewife Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) murders her husband with the help of her fed-up housekeeper (Jean Hill), the newfound “sisters in crime” escape to the bizarro shantytown of Mortville, a depraved penal colony presided over by a despotic queen (Edith Massey) whose tyranny pushes her subjects to shocking revolt. Deviant cops, death by dog food, DIY surgery—Waters unleashes all this and more in an at once relentlessly warped and oddly moral vision of queer rebellion. Get it on Amazon here!

Special Features

• NEW 4K RESTORATION OF THE FILM, supervised and approved by director John Waters, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
• Audio commentary featuring Waters and actor Liz Renay
• Optional Italian dub track
• New conversation between Waters and film programmer Cristina Cacioppo
• Back to Mortville, a tour of the film’s main Baltimore location, led by Waters
• New interview with actors Susan Lowe, Mary Vivian Pearce, and Mink Stole
• Interview with production designer Vincent Peranio
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Grace Byron

HAIRSPRAY

Street Date: June 23, 2026
Formats: 4K UHD + Blu-ray

After decades of pushing the boundaries of bad taste with his underground provocations, John Waters found surprising mainstream success with this infectiously irreverent rock-and-soul comedy. It’s 1962, and the only things bigger than the bouffant hairdos are the popular dance crazes sweeping the nation. When Baltimore teen Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake) shoots to stardom on a local TV dance party, her radical self-confidence and support for racial integration launch a movement that takes the city by storm. Costarring the inimitable Divine in a fiercely funny double role, Hairspray finds Waters marrying his wildly subversive sensibility with a newfound bubblegum sweetness for what may be his most irresistible film. Get it on Amazon here!

Special Features

• NEW 4K RESTORATION OF THE FILM, supervised and approved by director John Waters, with DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
• DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
• Alternate 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• Audio commentary featuring Waters and actor Ricki Lake
• New conversation between Waters and WFMU DJs Dave “the Spazz” Abramson and Gaylord Fields
• New interview with Lake and actor Colleen Fitzpatrick
• Reflections from actors Debbie Harry, Jo Ann Havrilla, Leslie Ann Powers, Clayton Prince, Shawn Thompson, and Pia Zadora
• Deleted scenes
• Behind-the-scenes documentary
• Get to Know John Waters (1987)
• Interview with production designer Vincent Peranio
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Jessica Kiang

Criterion Collection Titles: JULY 2026

July honestly feels like Criterion looked directly at emotionally fragile cinephiles and said: “What if we destroyed them artistically?”

Because between David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Mike Mills, and Neil Jordan… this month is doing a lot. Thank the Gods!

THE ELEPHANT MAN

Street Date: July 7, 2026
Formats: 4K UHD & Blu-Ray

With this poignant second feature, David Lynch brought his atmospheric visual and sonic palette to a notorious true story set in Victorian England. When the London surgeon Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins) meets the freak-show performer John Merrick (John Hurt), who has severe skeletal and soft-tissue deformities, he assumes that he must be intellectually disabled as well. As the two men spend more time together, though, Merrick reveals the intelligence, gentle nature, and profound sense of dignity that lie beneath his shocking appearance, and he and Treves develop a friendship. Get it on Amazon here!

Special Features

• 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Director David Lynch and critic Kristine McKenna reading from Room to Dream
• Archival interviews with Lynch, actor John Hurt, producers Mel Brooks and Jonathan Sanger, director of photography Freddie Francis, stills photographer Frank Connor, and makeup artist Christopher Tucker
• Audio recording from 1981 of an interview and Q&A with Lynch at the American Film Institute
• The Terrible Elephant Man Revealed, a 2001 documentary about the film
• Joseph Merrick: The Real Elephant Man, a 2005 program featuring archivist Jonathan Evans
• Trailer and radio spots
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: Excerpts from an interview with Lynch from the 2005 edition of filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley’s book Lynch on Lynch, and an 1886 letter to the editor of the London Times concerning Merrick by Francis Culling Carr Gomm, chairman of the London Hospital

ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

Street Date: July 14, 2026
Formats: 4K UHD & Blu-Ray

Martin Scorsese infuses the classic maternal melodrama with the brash spirit of the New Hollywood in this zeitgeist-capturing feminist tale of a woman finding her footing in a patriarchal world. An Academy Award–winning Ellen Burstyn shines as Alice Hyatt, a newly widowed mother who, with her precocious son, Tommy, takes off across the Southwest to pursue her dream of becoming a singer. Get it on Amazon here!

Special Features

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Martin Scorsese, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary featuring Scorsese and actors Ellen Burstyn, Jodie Foster, Kris Kristofferson, Diane Ladd, and Alfred Lutter
• New conversation between Burstyn and film critic Farran Smith Nehme
• New interview with editor Marcia Lucas
• Making-of documentary featuring Burstyn and Kristofferson
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by film critic Stephanie Zacharek

THE CRYING GAME

Street Date: July 14, 2026
Formats: 4K UHD & Blu-Ray

Neil Jordan’s emotionally stunning international sensation overcame the barriers between independent and mainstream cinema to become one of the defining films of the 1990s. Set against the turbulence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, The Crying Game is a puzzle box of a film, examining complex questions of loyalty, desire, and identity. Get it on Amazon here!

Special Features

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Neil Jordan, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary featuring Jordan
• New interviews with Jordan and actor Stephen Rea
• Making-of documentary from 2005 featuring interviews with Jordan, Rea, and producer Stephen Woolley
• Alternate ending featuring audio commentary by Jordan
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: Essays by film critics Tasha Robinson and Willow Catelyn Maclay

CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH

Street Date: July 21, 2026
Formats: 4K UHD & Blu-Ray

A scorching tale of toxic love in a toxic world, Nagisa Oshima’s second feature film marked the artistic breakthrough of one of the most radical voices in the history of Japanese cinema. Caught in the dog-eat-dog crucible of postwar Tokyo, teenage lovers Makoto (Miyuki Kuwano) and Kiyoshi (Yusuke Kawazu) turn to a life of crime, entrapping lecherous middle-aged men in order to extort their money. Get it on Amazon here!

Special Features

• 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• A Town of Love and Hope (1959), director Nagisa Oshima’s first feature film
• Tomorrow’s Sun (1959), a short film by Oshima
• Interview with film scholar Tony Rayns
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic Chris Fujiwara

I’LL REMIND YOU OF EVERYTHING: THE FILMS OF MIKE MILLS

Street Date: July 21, 2026
Formats: 4K UHD & Blu-Ray

The legacies we inherit, and the ones we pass on, form the heart of writer-director Mike Mills’s family portraits, inspired by his own experience. Get it on Amazon here!

Included films:

• Beginners
• 20th Century Women
• C’mon C’mon

Special Features

• New 4K digital masters of Beginners and 20th Century Women, supervised and approved by director Mike Mills, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
• New 4K digital master of C’mon C’mon, supervised and approved by Mills, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack
• Audio commentaries on all three films featuring Mills
• New documentary featuring Mills in conversation with filmmaker Kirsten Johnson
• Making-of programs for each film
• Music videos directed by Mills for Air’s “All I Need” and Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer”
• Additional films by Mills
• Trailers
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An appreciation by filmmaker Joachim Trier and an interview with Mills about his work outside of feature filmmaking

Criterion Collection Titles:  AUGUST 2026

By August, Criterion basically stops pretending this is a “summer lineup” and instead turns the release calendar into an existential crisis with bonus documentaries.

SAFE

Release Date: August 4, 2026
Formats: 4K UHD + Blu-ray Combo Edition

Todd Haynes’ Safe somehow feels even more terrifying now than it did in 1995. Which is honestly impressive for a film built almost entirely around existential dread, emotional isolation, and the horror of modern life quietly unraveling around you.

Julianne Moore delivers one of the great performances of the 1990s as Carol White, a Los Angeles housewife who develops a mysterious illness that may or may not be connected to environmental sensitivities. The brilliance of Safe is that it never gives easy answers. It’s horror through ambiguity. A panic attack wrapped in immaculate suburban production design.

And yes, this absolutely became one of those films people obsessively dissect in film school for decades. Deservedly.

Special Features

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Todd Haynes, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary featuring Haynes, actor Julianne Moore, and producer Christine Vachon
• Conversation between Haynes and Moore
• The Suicide, a 1978 short film by Haynes
• Interview with producer Christine Vachon
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Dennis Lim

HARLAN COUNTY USA

Release Date: August 25, 2026
Formats: 4K UHD + Blu-ray Combo Edition / Blu-ray Edition

Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County USA remains one of the most important American documentaries ever made. Full stop.

The Oscar-winning film documents a Kentucky coal miners’ strike with astonishing immediacy and emotional force, capturing not just labor conflict but the human cost of survival in America.

Special Features

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Barbara Kopple, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary by Kopple and editor Nancy Baker
• Making-of documentary featuring interviews with Kopple, crew members, and strike participants featured in the film
• Outtakes from the film
• Interview with bluegrass singer-songwriter Hazel Dickens
• Interview with filmmaker John Sayles
• Panel discussion from the 2005 Sundance Film Festival featuring Kopple and critic Roger Ebert
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

LITTLE ODESSA

Release Date: August 25, 2026
Formats: 4K UHD + Blu-ray Combo Edition / Blu-ray Edition

Before James Gray became one of contemporary cinema’s great chroniclers of doomed men quietly unraveling under emotional and existential pressure, there was Little Odessa.

The film stars Tim Roth as a hitman returning home to Brooklyn, where old wounds, family trauma, and violence collide in devastating fashion.

Special Features

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director James Gray, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary from 2000 featuring Gray
• Once Upon a Time . . . “Little Odessa”, a making-of documentary by David Thompson produced for French television
• New conversation between Gray and critic and podcaster Sean Fennessey
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by film critic Glenn Kenny

Kyle's Final Thoughts

What Criterion’s Summer 2026 slate ultimately reveals is how physical media has evolved into something bigger than simple preservation.

These releases aren’t just about “owning movies.” They’re about contextualizing art. Building conversations between eras, filmmakers, political movements, genres and cultural anxieties. One month you’re getting Bob Fosse channeling the chaos of counterculture comedy. The next you’re diving into labor documentaries that still feel painfully current. Then suddenly David Lynch arrives to emotionally destroy you in Victorian black-and-white. (And David Lynch can emotionally destroy me whenever he chooses.)

Cinema history is messy. Contradictory. Political. Intimate. Restless.

Criterion understands that better than almost anyone.

And honestly, in an era where streaming platforms casually erase films like they’re cleaning out old emails, releases like these feel increasingly important.

Yes, I know getting emotional about boutique 4K Blu-rays is deeply nerdy behavior.

No, I will absolutely not be calming down anytime soon.

Let me know what you're picking up!



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