Loading...Overall, the Cannes 2026 program looks a bit nervous. French publications write about war, European anxiety, identity crisis and fear of the future as the hidden theme of almost the entire competition. Even films that are not directly related to politics seem to be inside an atmosphere of historical instability.
Against this background, the choice of the jury is particularly revealing. The chairman is Park Chan-wook (Oldboy), a director who has never been afraid of visual brutality, moral ambiguity and strange emotional constructions. Many critics are already speculating that the jury’s decisions may be less predictable than usual. Joining him on the jury are Demi Moore, Ruth Negga, Laura Wandel, Chloe Zhao, Diego Céspedes, Isaac de Bankole, Paul Laverty, and Stellan Skarsgard.
“Electric Venus” by Pierre Salvadori.
The festival will open with the romantic burlesque comedy La Vénus électrique (The Electric Venus) by Pierre Salvadori. The film will be shown out of competition on May 12, right after the gala part, which will be led by actress Ai Aidara. The light in form auteur film by French director and screenwriter Salvadori raises the themes of deception, ambiguity and the game between truth and fiction. The action unfolds in Paris in the early XX century, in the atmosphere of artistic bohemia, popular entertainment and spiritualism. Against the backdrop of a hectic competition program, the film looks like a kind of overture to the entire festival: first the film reminds us of its ability to illusion, and then it begins to deal with the fears of modernity.
“Minotaur” by Andrei Zvyagintsev.
The return of Andrey Zvyagintsev was one of the main events of the program. “Minotaur” (“Minotaur”) is his first feature film in almost ten years after “Nelyubov”. The action takes place in Russia in 2022. The plot centers on a successful corporate executive whose carefully constructed life begins to crumble under the pressure of work problems, general instability and his wife’s infidelity. Judging by the project description, the political background here is embedded in the hero’s personal drama, rather than a direct publicistic statement. However, for Zvyagintsev, this is more of a traditional decision – revealing the inner world of the characters always remains a priority for the director.
The movie was filmed in Russian in Riga. Starring Dmitry Mazurov, Iris Lebedeva, Varvara Shmykova, Juris Zagars, Anatoly Bely, Vladimir Fridman, Anastasia Mishchenko and Yuri Zavalniuk. The cameraman, as always, Mikhail Krichman, who worked with Zvyagintsev on “The Return”, “Elena” and “Nelyubovye”, and the production designer – Andrei Ponkratov.
Pedro Almodóvar’s “Bitter Christmas.”
Pedro Almodóvar’s “Bitter Christmas” (“Amarga Navidad”) arrives at Cannes after its Spanish premiere, a rarity for the main competition. The movie is structured as a story within a story: director Raul goes through a creative crisis and starts writing a screenplay about a woman named Elsa, who after the death of her mother goes to Lanzarote. Gradually, the boundary between the author’s life and his fictional heroine begins to disappear. Starring Barbara Lenni and Leonardo Sbaraglia. Spanish critics met the picture unevenly: some saw it as an honest late self-portrait Almodovar, others accused the director of self-repeating. In general, the controversy surrounding the late Almodóvar seems to have become a separate genre of entertainment for the movie community.
James Gray’s “Paper Tiger.”
“Paper Tiger” (“Paper Tiger”) by James Gray looks to be one of the most Hollywood films of the competition. It is a crime story about two brothers who find themselves inside the system of financial fraud and political connections of New York. It stars Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller in the lead roles. Against the background of a predominantly European and chamber program, the film stands out for its frankly mainstream scale.
“Fatherland” by Pavel Pawlikowski
Another picture, which is awaited especially carefully, is “Fatherland” (“Fatherland”) by Pavel Pawlikowski. The movie is set in the period when the famous German writer Thomas Mann, along with his daughter Erica, travels through a divided Germany from the American zone in the Soviet zone. Starring Sandra Hüller, now the most fashionable European actress playing the writer’s daughter.
“Parallel Stories” by Asghar Farhadi.
Another movie, around which the expectation has already arisen – the new work of Asghar Farhadi “Parallel Tales” (Parallel Tales). The events of the tape unfolds in France. The main character, a writer in search of material for a new novel, begins to observe the neighbors opposite, and then hires a young assistant to the house. Gradually, the stranger’s life, which she observes, begins to destroy the usual order of her own. The movie stars Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, and Vincent Cassel.
“Lamb in a Box” by Hirokazu Kore-eda.
Unexpected interest was aroused Hirokazu Kore-eda, who is usually perceived as a director of quiet, humanistic films about families, memory and childhood. His latest work, Sheep in the Box, is being discussed in the film community as a shining example of New Wave auteur fiction – and of course, not surprisingly, it’s on the theme of artificial intelligence. For the past two years, the industry has been in a state of nervous anticipation: studios experimenting with digital actors, festivals discussing neural networks, actors’ unions trying to protect the human right to their own face. And now one of the most delicate directors of modern cinema turns to this topic – let’s see what will come out of it.
“The Man I Love” by Ira Sachs
Another notable item in our review is Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love, a drama about a theater actor living with AIDS in New York City in the late 1980s and trying to land what may be the last big role of his life. The lead actors are Rami Malek and Rebecca Hall. Notably, Ira Sachs directed the 2025 biographical drama Peter Hujar’s Day, about 24 hours in the life of the iconic 1970s New York photographer. In real life, Hujar, like Rami Malek’s fictional character, suffered from the same terrible disease. And if “Peter Hujar’s Day” is only permeated with the context of AIDS, then in “The Man I Love” this theme comes to the fore. It is obvious that the life of the creative elite of New York in the 70s and 80s deeply concerns the director: he decided to continue his research, changing a real character into a fictional one and making a step in just one decade.
“Hope” Na Hong Jin
Another notable film in the competition was Na Hong Jin’s sci-fi thriller Hope, about a mysterious discovery in a closed port town. The movie stars Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander and Taylor Russell. Against the backdrop of a predominantly chamber and psychological program, this is still one of the few major genre projects.
Cannes 2026 and family values
Several of the films in the competition are centered around the theme of family relationships. In Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s El Ser Querido (The Beloved), the famous director meets his actress daughter, with whom he has not been in touch for a long time. In the title role – Javier Bardem. Lea Misius “The Birthday Party” (“The Birthday Party”) begins as a family celebration and gradually turns into a psychological thriller, where old conflicts come out. The main roles are played by Hafsia Erzi, Benoit Magimel and Monica Bellucci. Marie Kreutzer in “Gentle Monster” (“Gentle Monster”) tells about a famous pianist whose family life is destroyed after moving out of town. Starring Léa Seydoux and Catherine Deneuve.
Directors’ Fortnight
The parallel section of Directors’ Fortnight will open with Kantemir Balagov’s Butterfly Jam, the director’s first English-language feature. After the success of “Tesnota” and “Dylda”, Balagov was considered one of the most important young directors in Russian cinema: both films won prizes at Cannes and the director quickly became the center of international festival attention. After 2022, Balagov left Russia and now lives and works in Los Angeles.
The movie is set inside a Circassian community in New Jersey. The main character is a teenager who helps his family in a restaurant, wrestles and tries to live inside a very closed world with rigid ideas about family, male role and reputation. After his father’s act, his life changes and his familiar environment gradually turns into a source of pressure and violence.
The movie stars Talha Akdogan, Barry Keoghan, Riley Keough and Harry Melling. Already from the first descriptions it is clear that Balagov retains his usual style – a tense movie about family, shame, intimacy and power within a closed community, only now moving it to an immigrant American environment.
The Un Certain Regard program includes “Ulya” (“UĻA”) by Latvian director Viesturs Kairišs. It is a movie about an Old Believer community in Latvia and about a girl in whom the future Ulyana Semenova, one of the most famous basketball players of Soviet sports, gradually emerges.
Marché du Film
A separate life in Cannes takes place not only inside the festival premieres, but also at the Marché du Film market, the largest industry platform where producers, distributors, streaming services, sales agents and investors come. Here, films are not so much competing for prizes as looking for money, international partners and future distribution.
At the film market will show “Becoming Capa” (“Becoming Capa”) Charlotte Colbert with Mark Eidelstein (“Anora”) – a movie about photographers Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, who shot Europe in the 1930s on the eve of the war. There will also present Russian criminal neo-noir-drama “Navar” (“Navar”) Arthur Grigoriev about a small-time crook involved in the robbery of a Buryat commune, selling jade.
Cannes 2026 and good old-fashioned elegance?
New documentary projects by Steven Soderbergh and Ron Howard will be shown out of competition. In addition, the festival will award honorary Palme Branches for their contribution to cinema
Barbra Streisand and director Peter Jackson. And Julianne Moore will be honored with the Kering Women In Motion Award.
John Travolta will bring to Cannes “Propeller. Propeller One-Way Night Coach, his directorial debut and, judging by the description, a very personal project. The picture grew out of a children’s book that Travolta wrote back in 1997, and out of his longtime passion for aviation. It is the story of a boy flying across America towards Hollywood, almost a postcard from an era when the airplane was associated not with transfers and queues, but with a holiday and a dream.
The fashion industry, Vogue and Vanity Fair write that this time the Croisette will be a space of cinephile glamour, not just an advertising platform for brands. So instead of straightforward luxury, we are waiting for black glasses and silhouettes of Anna Karina, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider and Monica Vitti. It is hoped that after several years of dominance by influencers and celebrity bloggers, Cannes will see a return to the good old fashioned idea of cinematic elegance.
Tellingly, even the festival’s official black and white poster is dedicated to Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise.
And yes, Cannes this year is trying to be closer to ordinary audiences. The free beach theater Cinéma de la Plage is hosting its first world premiere, Michel Leclair’s Les Caprices de L’Enfant Roi, a film about Molière and a young Louis XIV. Macé beach is being renamed in honor of the gorgeous Brigitte Bardot. A very French way of showing that Cannes is not only for the industry, but also for the audience.
