Tribeca 2026 Review: THE LEADER Explores the Tragic Lengths People Can Go When They Want to Believe

On March 26, 1997, police arrived at a remote mansion in Santa Fe to find 39 people dead, all lying in bed, covered by a purple shroud and wearing identical black Nikes.

Twenty years before that, a nurse named Bonnie Nettles (Vera Farmiga) is unhappy in her loveless marriage and is quickly charmed by Marshall Herff Applewhite (Tim Blake Nelson), a patient who was admitted to the hospital after trying to commit suicide.

While Applewhite insists that his and Bonnie's connection isn't meant to be romantic or sexual, but is instead spiritual, she chooses to leave her family behind and follow him. His preaching rhetoric changes over time, as does his audience, until one day, he and Bonnie stumble upon the idea of addressing people who already feel like they don't belong. From now on, they're selling the concept of human bodies being merely a "vehicle" to extraterrestrial beings that, with the right training and preparation, will be able to go back home, to graduate to the "Evolutionary Level Above Human".

While Michael Gallagher's film The Leader obviously tells the story of the infamous Heaven's Gate cult and mostly sticks close to the commonly known facts, it isn't really a traditional true-crime or an attempt to fully investigate and recount the tragedy in full. On the contrary, the film's narrative structure is quite fragmented (as is its editing, which is prone to brisk, abrupt cuts), often skipping large periods of time and "big moments" but pausing at the ones the authors deem more revealing.

While the movie starts with Applewhite and obviously keeps coming back to him, it doesn't really focus on him as much as one would expect. It isn't that much about Bonnie either, even though the first half of the film tends to navigate towards her perspective, even at times openly suggesting that she was, in fact, the true titular leader. But Gallagher, who also wrote the script, is more interested in exploring the phenomenon as a whole, rather than doing a character study.

The Leader isn't the first piece to depict how the need to believe in something can drive people to tragic and even fatal extremes. Nor is it the first to explore the question of what leads the leaders, and whether they might actually believe their bullshit themselves. It doesn't seem to really matter. As Gallagher's film emphasizes, even if they don't at first, at some point, they most probably start to, since the actual force behind such formations is the need to connect, to be part of something, no matter what. 

For the most part, the film refuses to be overly dramatic, going for an absurdist tragicomedy feel of sorts. Since absurd is the stuff our real life is made of, this peculiar tone makes The Leader feel strangely realistic in its quest not to diagnose and indict, but to fulfill what all the major characters here seem to want most -- offer an understanding. This desire drives not only Applewhite and Bonnie, but also their followers, particularly the characters played by Grace Caroline Currey, Simon Rex, and Jim Parsons (the casting of the former Sheldon Cooper is additionally bittersweet, given all the Star Trek references featured in the cult's practices).

In its rather moderate runtime, the film doesn't give all the answers but does reveal a paradox regarding blind following, one that proves to be quite relevant today. While desperately looking for a true home and a sense of belonging, both the cult's leaders and its followers willingly isolate themselves, shedding the very things that might have connected them to the world -- their identities, their loved ones, romantic and sexual urges -- leading them closer to nothing but a point of no return.

The Beatles were wrong after all. The question was never where all the lonely people come from. The question is, where will they choose to go to stop being so lonely?

The film enjoyed its world premiere at the 2026 Tribeca Festival. Visit the film's page at the official festival site for more information.