January 2026’s slate of Criterion Collection releases spans revisionist westerns and modern Taiwanese masterworks to Powell-and-Pressburger-adjacent romance, Oscar-lauded drama, and a new Criterion Premieres title – plus the latest volume in Martin Scorsese’s vital World Cinema Project.
Dead Man (directed by Jim Jarmusch)
From The Criterion Collection: With Dead Man, his first period piece, Jim Jarmusch imagined the nineteenth-century American West as an existential wasteland, delivering a surreal reckoning with the ravages of industrialization, the country’s legacy of violence and prejudice, and the natural cycle of life and death. Accountant William Blake (Johnny Depp) has hardly arrived in the godforsaken outpost of Machine before he’s caught in the middle of a fatal lovers’ quarrel. Wounded and on the lam, Blake falls under the watch of the outcast Nobody (Gary Farmer), who guides his companion on a spiritual journey, teaching him to dispense poetic justice along the way. Featuring austerely beautiful black-and-white photography by Robby Müller and a live-wire score by Neil Young, Dead Man is a profound and unique revision of the western genre.
Release date & formats: Available January 6, 2026 on 4K UHD + Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD. Pre-order here.
Yi Yi (directed by Edward Yang)
From The Criterion Collection: The extraordinary, internationally embraced Yi Yi, directed by the late Taiwanese master Edward Yang, follows a middle-class family in Taipei over the course of one year, beginning with a wedding and ending with a funeral. Whether chronicling middle-aged father NJ’s tentative flirtations with an old flame or precocious young son Yang-Yang’s attempts at capturing reality with his beloved camera, the filmmaker deftly imbues every gorgeous frame with a compassionate clarity. Warm, sprawling, and dazzling, this intimate epic is one of the undisputed masterworks of the twenty-first century.
Release date & formats: Available January 13, 2026 on 4K UHD + Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD. Pre-order here.
Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 5
From The Criterion Collection: Established by Martin Scorsese in 2007, the World Cinema Project has maintained a fierce commitment to preserving and presenting masterpieces from around the globe, with a growing roster of more than sixty restorations of works by essential filmmakers. This collector’s set gathers four groundbreaking and innovative films, ranging from the epic to the intimate, from Algeria (Chronicle of the Years of Fire), Burkina Faso (Yam Daabo), India (Kummatty), and Kazakhstan (The Fall of Otrar). Each title is a significant contribution to the art form and a window onto a cinematic tradition that international audiences previously had limited opportunities to experience.
Release date & formats: Available January 20, 2026 on Blu-ray. Pre-order here.
Captain Blood (directed by Michael Curtiz)
From The Criterion Collection: With this spectacular romantic adventure, a new era of Hollywood swashbuckling was born, as was a devilishly dashing star named Errol Flynn. He brings boundless charisma to the role of an idealistic Irish physician who, declared a traitor to England and sold into slavery in the New World, takes his revenge by transforming himself into the notorious pirate Captain Blood. The groundbreaking symphonic score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, marking the emergence of the Warner Bros. music department as a vital element in the studio’s moviemaking; the spitfire chemistry between Flynn and Olivia de Havilland in the first of their iconic pairings; the rousing naval-battle finale—all come together under the expert direction of Michael Curtiz to form an exemplar of classic film craftsmanship sailing full speed ahead.
Release date & formats: Available January 20, 2026 on 4K UHD + Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD. Pre-order here.
Caught by the Tides (directed by Jia Zhangke)
From The Criterion Collection: In this visionary chronicle of China’s turbulent new century, acclaimed director Jia Zhangke embarks on a kaleidoscopic odyssey across time and space, incorporating footage captured for his previous films into an entirely original, captivating epic. Drawing on a twenty-three-year collaboration between Jia and actors Zhao Tao and Li Zhubin, Caught by the Tides casts them as a pair of estranged lovers, tracking these characters across an increasingly alien China as they age in real time, from the dawn of the millennium to the COVID-19 era. Observing the future-shock developments transforming his country, Jia constructs a sensorially immersive, emotionally profound portrait of both a world in flux and two people navigating its uncertain currents.
Release date & formats: Available January 20, 2026 on Blu-ray and DVD. Pre-order here.
The Dead (directed by John Huston)
From The Criterion Collection: The elegiac last film by John Huston finds the legendary director adapting a masterly short story by his favorite writer, James Joyce, into a poignant reflection on the totality of life. During a snowy winter in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Dublin, the members of an extended family convene for a night of wine, song, and celebration—but it’s not until after the festivities that Gretta (Anjelica Huston) reveals a secret to her husband (Donal McCann) that casts the entire evening in a new light. Aglow with a mix of nostalgia and melancholy, and featuring a cast of stellar Irish actors, The Dead gracefully evokes the passage of time and the haunting power of memory.
Release date & formats: Available January 20, 2026 on 4K UHD and Blu-ray. Pre-order here.
Birth (directed by Jonathan Glazer)
From The Criterion Collection: Jonathan Glazer’s second feature is a haunting cinematic enigma that explores the mysteries of the heart. Nicole Kidman delivers a masterfully multilayered performance as Anna, a widow still mourning the death of her husband a decade earlier when she meets Sean (Cameron Bright), a ten-year-old boy who claims to be his reincarnation—leading her into a wrenching confrontation with her own unresolved grief and desires. Featuring painterly cinematography by Harris Savides and a hypnotic orchestral score by Alexandre Desplat, Birth plays its outré premise with unflinching sincerity, yielding a profound emotional reverie on the possibilities of love beyond the physical realm.
Release date & formats: Available January 27, 2026 on 4K UHD and Blu-ray. Pre-order here.
Kiss of the Spider Woman (directed by Héctor Babenco)
From The Criterion Collection: Featuring indelible performances from Raul Julia and an Academy Award–winning William Hurt, Kiss of the Spider Woman is a work of radical compassion that boldly expands notions of love, gender, and revolution. In the film—directed by Héctor Babenco following his international breakthrough with Pixote, and adapted from the novel by the iconoclastic writer Manuel Puig—Julia and Hurt play Valentin and Molina, a militant leftist activist and a queer, cinema-obsessed window dresser, imprisoned together under a repressive military dictatorship. The two gradually forge a bond that transforms the way they both understand politics, sexuality, and masculinity. Blending raw realism with Molina’s imaginative escapes into sumptuous movie fantasy, this searing human drama offers a powerful vision of personal liberation embedded within broader political struggle.
Release date & formats: Available January 27, 2026 on 4K UHD and Blu-ray. Pre-order here.
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