Family films had a good year in 2026. These ten are worth your time: a troll who climbs out of his underground world, a panda mistaken for a messenger from the heavens, a boy raised by ostriches, and a girl who follows crows into a forest that has its own government. Adults and children will find something here.
Content
- The Magic Faraway Tree
- Krølle Bølle
- Woodwalkers 2
- Panda Plan: The Magical Tribe
- Flavia
- L’enfant du désert
- Hershey
- Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew
- Wildwood
- One Day
The Magic Faraway Tree
2026, Adventure, Family
UK, PG
Director: Ben Gregor
Top Cast: Andrew Garfield, Claire Foy, Nicola Coughlan
The Thompson family took their move to a quiet British village as a punishment. The kids desperately miss their old life, and the parents are struggling to keep the family together.
At once they found a huge, ancient tree in the nearby forest. It turns out to be a home for strange creatures like Moon-Face, Mr. Watzisname, the Angry Pixie, and the kind-hearted fairy, Silky. Every time the children climb to the very top of the tree, they discover a new magical world. One day it’s the Land of Sweets, the next it’s the Land of Birthdays, or places where all the rules of logic disappear.
But the most important part of the story happens at the bottom. While the kids are exploring magic worlds, the parents stay on the ground, slowly rediscovering each other and remembering what actually matters in life.
Krølle Bølle
IMDb: 6.8/10
2026, Animation, Family, Fantasy
Denmark
Director: Jan Rahbek
Top Cast: Carl Løber Roliggaard, Dagmar Celinder Norrbom, Mille Lehfeldt
A tribe of trolls lives beneath the island of Bornholm. Their homes are caves. Their neighbours are bats. Life comes with noisy parties and strict rules.
The most important rule: do not go up. People live up there, and that makes it dangerous. Most trolls follow this without question. Krölle Bölle does not. He is, by nature, an anarchist. He has never understood why the rules exist.
One day he decides to find out for himself. His little sister follows him up. After the first shock, the world above is not as frightening as the adults described. It is, however, far more confusing.
Woodwalkers 2
IMDb: 5.3/10
2026, Family, Fantasy
Germany
Director: Sven Unterwaldt Jr.
Top Cast: Emile Chérif, Lilli Falk, Johan von Ehrlich
A new school year at Clearwater High, and for Karag it starts with serious trouble. Karag is a teenage shapeshifter who can transform into a mountain lion. He has always balanced between two worlds: the human and the animal. This time, the threat is not what Karag expected. It starts with his own loyalty.
The Woodwalkers' Council brings charges against Andrew Milling, Karag’s mentor. Milling stands accused of attacking humans. For Karag, Milling is more than a teacher. He is the only adult who ever understood what Karag is and helped him live with it. But the evidence against Milling is strong, and Karag begins to doubt.
Then Milling makes an offer. He is willing to tell Karag where his real family lives: his birth parents, the pumas he has never known. But only if Karag lies to the council. He has spent his life wanting to know where he came from. Now the only way to find out is to lie. Karag has to choose. The answer will decide not what kind of creature he is, but what kind of person.
The film is the second in a German fantasy series based on the books by Katharina Rue. It opened in cinemas on 29 January 2026.
Panda Plan: The Magical Tribe
2026, Action, Comedy, Family
China
Director: Derek Hui Wang-Yu
Top Cast: Jackie Chan, Da Ke, Shan Qiao
A panda named Huhuei lives at a nature reserve and is about to move to a new enclosure. Everything goes to plan until a group of international thieves shows up. In the chaos, Huhuei falls from a cliff and disappears into the unknown. When she comes round, Jackie is beside her, and the world around them is completely different.
They have landed among an isolated tribe. For centuries, the tribe lived cut off from the outside world. The tribe has a sacred totem, and Huhuei looks exactly like it. The villagers immediately declare her a messenger from the heavens. She is the one they have been waiting for. She has arrived at the right moment. There is no way to refuse.
Flavia
2026, Adventure, Comedy, Family
UK
Director: Bharat Nalluri
Top Cast: Molly Belle Wright, Martin Freeman, Jonathan Pryce
England, 1951. The de Luce family lives in Buckshaw, a crumbling estate in the village of Bishop’s Lacey. Eleven-year-old Flavia is the youngest of three sisters. She is not like anyone else in her family. Fashion does not interest her. Novels do not interest her. Her private laboratory holds a collection of poisons, and her head is full of chemical formulae. Flavia knows more about toxicology than most adults, and she knows it.
One night she finds a dead body in the grounds. The police quickly turn their attention to her father, Colonel de Luce. He is a quiet man whose life holds more gaps than he lets on. The official version satisfies everyone. Except Flavia.
She launches her own investigation. Almost no one notices. The deeper she digs, the more secrets surface: about the killer, and about her own family.
L’enfant du désert
2026, Adventure, Family
France, Belgium
Director: Gilles de Maistre
Top Cast: Nahel Tran, Zayn Sekkat, Nahil Bouazzaoui
Fourteen-year-old Sun is writing a book. The story she tells is not invented. Her grandfather told it to her: a boy named Hadara, whom he had seen with his own eyes. A boy whose family lost him in the Sahara when he was two years old. A boy whom ostriches saved.
Hadara’s story takes place in the early twentieth century. A sandstorm catches the toddler alone in the desert. No water. No food. No chance of survival. But a flock of ostriches takes him in as one of their own. They carry him on their backs, protect him, and sleep beside him at night. Hadara learns to move like an ostrich, eat like an ostrich, and live in the desert like an ostrich. He stays with them for almost ten years, until people finally find him.
The film moves between two timelines. In the present, Sun works on her manuscript and tries to keep her grandfather’s memory alive. In the past, the film shows Hadara’s life among the birds. Like the book Sun is writing, this film tells a true story. Swedish journalist Monica Zak documented it in her book Hadara: The Ostrich Child.
Hershey
2026, Biography, Drama
USA
Director: Mark Waters
Top Cast: Finn Wittrock, Alexandra Daddario, Alan Ruck, Richard Kind, David Costabile, Heléne Yorke
Late nineteenth century. Milton Hershey is a confectioner from Pennsylvania who has already gone bankrupt several times. Caramel businesses. Chocolate experiments. Debts. Sceptics. Most people in his position would have given up. But Milton and his wife Kitty believe in a better future and refuse to stop.
The breakthrough comes without warning. Hershey develops a way to make milk chocolate cheaply. This is not a European luxury that has to be shipped across an ocean. Anyone can afford it.
A whole industrial empire grows around that one recipe. The town of Hershey, Pennsylvania gains a factory, workers' housing, schools, and an amusement park.
This is a success story. But it is also about what they chose to give away. After decades of hard work, Milton and Kitty left their fortune to a school for orphans.
Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew
2026, Action, Adventure, Fantasy
USA
Director: Greta Gerwig
Top Cast: Daniel Craig, Emma Mackey, Carey Mulligan
London, late nineteenth century. Digory Kirke is a boy with a hard life. His mother is dying. The adults around him are too busy for him. His neighbour and friend Polly Plummer is curious and fearless. Together they wander up to the attic of Digory’s strange uncle, Uncle Andrew. He calls himself a magician. He does not seem to be entirely joking.
Uncle Andrew gives them each a magic ring, and the children vanish. They find themselves in a quiet wood between worlds. It is full of pools, and each one leads to a different universe. Out of curiosity, they jump into the wrong pool. They land in Charn: a dead world under a frozen red sun. In a vast hall, statues of ancient kings sit on thrones. One is a woman with a cold face. Digory strikes a golden bell. Polly warned him not to.
Jadis wakes. She is the last of the royal line that destroyed its own world to win a civil war. The children accidentally bring her to London, and then to a place where a new world is just beginning.
Wildwood
2026, Animation, Adventure, Drama
USA
Director: Travis Knight
Top Cast: Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Carey Mulligan
Prue McKeel lives in Portland, Oregon. Ordinary girl. Ordinary family. Then one day a flock of crows flies into their yard and carries her little brother Mac away. Prue does not wait. She follows them into the Wildwood. Officially, no one goes there. Unofficially, few come back.
She brings her classmate Curtis along. Together they enter a world that sits right beside the human city but is completely unknown to it. The Wildwood has its own laws, armies, politics, and old conflicts. Mystical creatures live here. The crows that took Mac were following orders. Prue needs to find out whose.
A mysterious woman named Alexandra is behind it all. The more Prue learns about the Wildwood, the clearer it becomes: her brother was taken for a reason.
One Day
2026, Drama, Romance
India
Director: Sunil Pandey
Top Cast: Sai Pallavi, Junaid Khan, Kunal Kapoor
Rohan is a quiet software engineer who has been hopelessly in love with his colleague Meera for years. She is out of reach. She is seeing their boss, Nakul, a married man. Rohan keeps his feelings to himself. But one day he makes a wish: to spend just one day with Meera. The wish comes true. Not in the way he imagined.
On a work trip to Sapporo, Japan, Meera has an accident. When she comes round, she has transient global amnesia. Her short-term memory is completely gone. Of everyone around her, she only remembers Rohan. He was there when she needed someone. In her mind, he is her boyfriend.
Rohan has a choice. He can tell her the truth and lose this day forever. Or he can stay in a role he was never meant to play. He stays silent. They spend a whole day together. Meera is open with him, laughs, takes his hand. She does not know that by evening her memory will return.
