The History of Concrete

Between meaning and mayhem. This meandering but laser-focused essay film is, like the best episodes of Wilson’s show, sustained by parallel dramatic questions that inevitably answer each other by the end.

Wilson showed with his television series just how life-affirming it can be to just observe, and, with his triumph of a feature doc, he shows us how merely looking around can reveal entire histories.

With his maiden cinematic venture, Wilson doesn’t break new ground so much as continue his idiosyncratic artistry on a larger scale.

With The History of Concrete, John Wilson takes the least interesting subject imaginable — the dull gray composite used for sidewalks, overpasses and that great big church in “The Brutalist” — and crafts what’s likely to be the most entertaining documentary of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

Though an extension of the same tone that was experienced in his HBO series, this feature is more than just one very long episode of his show. Instead, it’s like Wilson has fully become a funnier, more frenetic version of Frederick Wiseman.

Wilson sometimes struggles to make this feature-length documentary as consistently entertaining as his old series’ half-hour episodes. But he continues to mine surprisingly emotional moments from his wryly comic approach.

The result is scruffily endearing, though it teeters on the verge of collapse at times, as the pretense that what’s unfolding onscreen is all a serendipitous journey gets stretched to the breaking point.