The Independent Film Company (formerly IFC Films) has dropped the trailer for Tangles, the acclaimed animated film based on Sarah Leavitt‘s graphic memoir of the same name, starring Abbi Jacobson as Sarah, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as her mother Midge. Directed by Leah Nelson (in her feature directorial debut), and co-written by Leavitt, the film retells the story of how Sarah had to relocate from San Francisco to look after her mother, after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
The official synopsis elaborates Leavitt, who is a lesbian from Canada, had to leave “her exciting life as an activist and artist in ’90s San Francisco to return to her eccentric family in the conservative small town she recently fled. Initially confident she can manage the situation, she soon realizes she must accept the harsh, disorienting reality of the disease to become the daughter her family needs.”
Additional cast members include Bryan Cranston, Beanie Feldstein, Seth Rogen, Samira Wiley, Sarah Silverman, Wanda Sykes, Bowen Yang, and Pamela Adlon. The film’s subject is a personal one for Rogen, who also produced the film with his wife Lauren Miller Rogen, as her late mother had early-onset Alzheimer’s, and the couple run a non-profit to help those with the disease called HFC (Hilarity for Charity).
Tangles premiered earlier this year to a standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, and the release of the trailer came as it it won the Grand Jury Prize at LA’s Animation is Film Festival. It was animated by Giant Ant, a Vancouver-based studio co-founded by Nelson, whose previous credits include the Animaniacs revival, and Hilda and the Mountain King.
The movie, which is rated R for language, sexual content, and some graphic nudity, will be released in select theaters on January 15, and nationwide on January 22, 2027. Screenings will be held beforehand in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, November 27, to qualify for next year’s awards season. You can check out the official poster below in the meantime too:
