Cannes 2026: Festival Verdict

The 79th Cannes Film Festival was bound to be a barometer for the hard times the world is currently going through, just as February’s Berlinale was shaken to the core by the invasion of Gaza and ideological divisions in Europe. Though not without controversy, Cannes seemed to absorb most of the shock waves, finding meaning in a red carpet without Hollywood, and with tons of tourists and new online journalists flooding sold-out screenings from the first day to the last. Though not as spicy as usual, there was an aura of normalcy over everything.

But even if the war in Iran was in a momentary lull, it left a void, not just of Iranian films (the only one of note in the program was Asghar Farhadi’s very French Parallel Tales starring a wickedly amusing Isabelle Huppert), but of the many Iranian journalists, sales companies and movie people who were almost entirely absent – just as some Israeli regulars missed the festival for the first time in decades. Yet there were also attempts to react positively in the face of the Mideast conflict, notably the efforts made by the Egyptian film industry to attract attention, for the second year, to the Egyptian pavilion with a rich program of guests, panels and events, including promotion of the Cairo Film Festival and the El Gouna Film Festival coming up in the fall. And for the 10th year running, the Arab Cinema Center hosted its International Critics’ Awards on the beach, a glamorous but serious event that focused a needed spotlight on the MENA region. Winner of the Best Feature Film was the Palestinian dramedy Once Upon a Time in Gaza directed by brothers Arab and Tarzan Nasser.

THE FRENCH PROTESTS

Meanwhile at Cannes, nine years after the Netflix controversy that led to a change in festival rules (specifically, films that don’t commit to a regular theatrical release in France won’t be eligible for Competition slots), streamers were once again booed when their logos appeared in the opening credits of French films. Perhaps the people protesting were not aware that, by law, streaming services operating in France must invest in local productions. It was in marked contrast to the audiences’ habit of indiscriminately applauding all other logos, which has gotten so out of hand that one journalist actually yelled, “Production companies are not your friends!” at the start of a press screening in the Debussy theater.

This situation escalated further due to an ongoing protest involving Canal+ and its majority shareholder Vincent Bolloré, whose growing influence in the film industry is viewed with concern in some progressive quarters. An open letter objecting to this, with signatures both French and international (Javier Bardem and Ken Loach among them), led to Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada declaring the company would never work with any of those people again. As a result, the Canal+ logo (present in most French films shown at the festival) was met with derision and disapproval for the entire second week of the event.

THE FILMS

The festival competition itself was surprisingly diversified in themes and approaches, packing in unabashed genre films never seen before in Cannes’ main section and a lot of WW2 history redux, along with highbrow art films running way over two hours that tested the patience. Yet the film that captured the critics’ hearts and remained for many the most engrossingly conceived, shot and acted was the 82-minute Fatherland, Pawel Pawlikowski’s wrenching snapshot of history when, in 1949, Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann traveled through a newly divided Germany with his adult daughter Erika. Actors Sandra Huller and Hanns Zischler perform a pungent, illuminating dance around the big issues of the time in an extremely resonant work.

Another memorable film that tied a personal story of jealousy and murder into a historical moment was Minotaur, set in 2022 when military reservists were being drafted in Russia to fight and quite possibly die in Ukraine. Andrei Zviaguintsev’s thought-provoking tale of unpunished crime invokes Putin’s lawless regime and the immoral acquiescence of the middle class at every turn. The jury recognized it with the Grand Prix.

Nailing the Palme d’Or for the second time after his abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days wore the crown in 2007, Romanian director Cristian Mungiu decries the official abuse of power and religious intolerance, only here it is progressive, secular, humanist Norwegian culture that destroys a half-Romanian Evangelical family with five children in the name of protecting the kids. There is nothing strikingly insightful but the high-stakes drama keeps you watching, which should be a green light for release (perhaps along with an unrecognizable Sebastian Stan playing the father.)

Building on past Cannes breakout sensations like Parasite, Titane and The Substance, this was a strong year for genre cinema on the Croisette. Elevated horror, sci-fi and fantasy thriller tropes were well represented across all festival sections. Indeed, perhaps the most incongruous film ever to gatecrash the prestigious art-house zone of the main competition was Na Hong-jin’s Hope, a shallow but hugely enjoyable gonzo action comedy epic about alien monsters invading a small town, and reportedly the most expensive production in South Korean history. Also competing for the Palme d’Or was Arthur Harari’s haunting drama The Unknown (L’Inconnue), starring Lea Seydoux, which uses its cryptic body-swap horror premise as a lens to explore identity and alienation, and The Birthday Party (Histoires de la Nuit) by Léa Mysius, a tense home invasion thriller co-starring Monica Belucci, which clothes its pulpy plot in glossy, stylish trimmings.

A disappointing note in this year’s main competition was sub-par work by veteran auteurs with a previously strong Cannes track record. Both Asghar Farhadi’s Parallel Tales (Histoires Paralleles) and Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas (Amarga Navidad) were meta-textual chamber dramas about creative ethics and the tensions between fiction and reality, each reliably polished and well acted but ultimately low on spark. Even reliable Japanese director Koreeda Hirokazu’s reflection on an AI future, Sheep in the Box, that explores the possibility of giving the parents of dead children android replicants to replace them seemed on the slight side for such heavy subject matter. James Gray, one of the few American heavyweights in Cannes, also returned to very familiar ground with Paper Tiger, yet another ponderous rumination on fraternal tensions and organised crime in 1980s New York. Starring Adam Driver, Scarlett Johanssen and Miles Teller, this obstinately drab saga felt like it was scripted by an AI program trained entirely on earlier, better James Gray movies.

It was a year when LGBTQ stories were very prominent in the program, especially outside the main competition. Opening the Un Certain Regard section to generally warm reviews — and winning the Queer Palme — was Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma by Jane Schoenbrun, an ambitiously weird candy-coloured queer fantasia which uses vintage slasher-movie conventions to unlock its underlying theme of sexual self-awakening. But the main UCR prize ultimately went to Sandra Wollner’s Everytime, a family psychodrama about grief and loss which skips into a Twilight Zone of time loops and ghostly echoes in its poignant final act. The Midnight section also threw up a few superior genre gems including French writer-director Marion Le Corroller’s debut feature Species (Sanguine), a savagely dark comedy thriller that turns workplace exploitation into a blood-soaked body-horror nightmare.

Animation had a strong presence across most sections of the festival, with nine feature films spread between the Critics’ Week, Directors Fortnight, Un Certain Regard, Special Screenings and Midnight Screenings. The latter hosted the world premiere of Jim Queen, a gloriously queer comedy where a mysterious virus causes gay men to become straight. Above all, it was a triumph for hand-drawn worlds, be it the stylized take on a celebrated opera (Carmen by Sébastien Laudenbach) or the classically elegant French-language adaptation of a British book (Lucy Lost by Olivier Clert). And while the short film competition was marked by the triumph of the Mexican-Chilean live-action work For the Opponents, the warmest reaction from the crowd was for the Swedish stop-motion dark comedy The End, the latest sterling example of Niki Lindroth von Bahr’s knack for getting great results out of funny-looking anthropomorphic animals.

Another major theme was France dealing with its past, specifically World War II, revisited in three films: Moulin focused on Resistance leader Jean Moulin and his tension-filled interactions with Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie; A Man of His Time explored the other end of the spectrum, with director Emmanuel Marre taking inspiration from his great-grandfather to delve into the inner workings of the Vichy regime; and then, as the main Out of Competition event of this edition (and the de facto French blockbuster of the year once it releases in cinemas next month), De Gaulle: Tilting Iron (the first half of a two-film epic) brought the house down as viewers were reminded of the passion Charles De Gaulle brought to the effort of liberating France.

A BOLD DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT

If We Are Aliens left Cannes empty-handed, it was not for its want of quality or lack of audience appreciation. The animation, which explores the impact of an unravelling childhood friendship on two young men, received rapturous applause at each of its screenings (including on the final day, with a markedly younger audience due to special passes for under-25’s).

Directors’ Fortnight was perhaps one of the most audacious and diverse in recent years. On the one hand, it featured the return of many festival veterans who have a long history with the independent programme. Alain Cavalier, 93, sent in what would most probably his final (and very, very funny) testimony about cinema with the diary-essay documentary Thanks For Coming. After years away over at the other end of the Croisette racing for the Palme d’Or, Bruno Dumont showed up at the Fortnight with Red Rocks, a summertime drama about romance and rivalry starring children; he also delivered a masterclass full of insights about the very different creative decisions needed to accommodate his very young cast.

With devastatingly moving performances from her twenty-something actors, Clio Barnard’s third Fortnight entry I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning – about the diverging fortunes of five longtime friends from the same defunct housing estate in Birmingham – was the winner of the Fortnight’s People’s Choice Awards. Camaraderie also yields chemistry in French filmmaker Lila Pinell’s Shana, about a young woman counting on the support and protection of her circle of girlfriends as she confronts the return of a newly paroled, abusive ex.

Another pleasant surprise at the Fortnight this year was Sarah Arnold’s taboo-busting, genre-shifting Too Many Beasts. Revolving around an emotionally scarred Corsican cop’s professional and personal alliance with a no-nonsense police psychiatrist as they investigate “eco-terrorist” attacks in a small farm town, the film offered a wild reworking of the tropes worn so increasingly thin in recent years in rural-set, social realist French dramas. With its surreal narrative and a no-holds-barred satire about backward provincialism and patriarchy, the Paris-based Italian-Swiss Arnold offered hopes for French comedy after the catastrophically staid festival-opener The Electric Kiss.

JAPAN TAKES CENTER STAGE

By choosing Japan as its country of honor this year, the Cannes Film Market made a rare alignment with the film festival itself. After France, Japan was probably the most omnipresent country on the Croisette this year, with a wide range of its filmmakers – from long-dead auteurs to first-time directors – casting a very large shadow over the festival.

 Apart from securing a whopping three nominations in the main competition (and an ex-aequo award to Hamaguchi’s actresses Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto in All of a Sudden), Japan also boasted a film in Un Certain Regard (Yukiko Sode’s All the Lovers in the Night, starring Tadanobu Asano of Thor fame). Cult cineaste Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s period suspense thriller The Samurai and the Prisoners screened in the Cannes Première programme; Kohei Kadowaki’s completely un-Ghibli animation drama We Are Aliens in Directors’ Fortnight; and a restoration of the late Akira Kurosawa’s 1943 debut Sanshiro Sugata appeared in Cannes Classics.

Japan was also fertile ground for two young non-Japanese filmmakers. Chinese student director Wong Chau-hong’s short film Will It Rain Again Today was produced by Nihon University College of Art in Tokyo and competed for La Cinef. In Un Certain Regard, Greek director Konstantina Kotzamani presented her first feature Titanic Ocean, a film set in a fictional Japanese institution where young women train to become professional mermaid performers.