Sundance 2026 – Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! ★★★★

Released: TBC (Sundance 2026)

Director: Josef Kubota Wladyka

Starring: Rinko Kikuchi, Alejandro Edda

Firstly, we must congratulate co-writer-director Josef Kubota Wladyka on two things: the excellent title of his movie, and for dedicating his excellently-titled movie to his mom. Secondly, we must congratulate Emile Ardolino and Eleanor Bergstein on the deathless Dirty Dancing, a version of which features heavily in Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! The version being the Japanese-language adaption of the stage play, of course, to which Haru (a superb Rinko Kikuchi) brings a date, and which is filmed with camerawork that echoes that of the original 1987 film. That interlude aside, there’s nothing unoriginal about Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, the story of how a young Japanese woman in big emotional trouble recovers her sense of self through ballroom dancing. Never resorting to schmaltz whilst doing the neat trick of feeling both timeless and modern, it was by far the most joyful film of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.  

Haru (Ha-Chan is a term of endearment for her closest friends) is married to Luis (Alejandro Edda), a sweet Mexican man. They live happily in Tokyo in a house with an enormous garden and are obsessed with ballroom dancing. Then tragedy strikes, one which cinematographer Daniel Satinoff films in such a fantastical style it takes a while for Haru’s new reality to sink in. Her grief is such that she barely leaves her flat for most of a year. However her birthday prompts a party thrown by her sister Yuki (Yoh Yoshida) and their best friend Hiromi (YOU), a super fun trainwreck who lives in New York and still ties her hair in plaits despite her age. As Haru allows them to drag her out into the world again, they go to a ballroom dancing class, where the new instructor, Fedir (Alberto Guerra), is an incredible dancer and the world’s most handsome man. Some sleuthing by Hiromi on the dating apps (where she is trawling for ‘Tokyo dick’) reveals that Fedir is in an open marriage. Yuki and Haru are so naïve that when they see his profile seeks ‘play partners’ they think he’s talking about tennis. But when, to Haru’s astonishment, she and Fedir prove to have some chemistry together, she tells him that she’s in an open marriage too. It’s not totally a lie; Luis does show up in the house from time to time. There’s no way any of this could go wrong. 

Of course, thanks to Haru’s nerves and Fedir’s intimidating handsomeness, it hardly goes at all, until a run-in with some drunk salarymen outside a subway station turns into a fight/dance number to “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes. The way in which dance numbers express Haru’s overwhelming and complex emotions is really delightful. The mood shifts between heightened reality and ordinary daily life feel remarkably organic in context. The stresses Haru is under and the ways she handles herself focus on the power of dancing and music to make our big feelings manageable. More pleasingly still the main emotion of the movie is kindness. A lot of mistakes get made, you see, and people are not always their best selves. This is not always okay, and some of the relationships within the movie are irrevocably changed by its end, but the key issue here is how people learn to be gentle with themselves and others.  

Kikuchi carries the movie with ease, switching between speaking Japanese, English and Spanish, throwing herself into the dancing, and doing it all under a triangular 80s-style perm. Edda has a very difficult role as someone who is saintly without being saintlike, if that makes sense, but he’s such a warm and winning presence it’s entirely believable. Mr Guerra gets to use his charm and his physicality to make a very strong impression as the kind of man who usually gets what he wants, and he’s surprised to find that he wants Haru as much as she wants him. It all comes together to a very satisfying ending – it’s not a spoiler to say the big finale is a dance party on a train to “Dreams” by Irish band The Cranberries – which reinforces the importance of kindness and community to deal with your big feelings. Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! is such a crowd pleaser it could well be its own musical someday.