Thierry Frémaux, the director of Cannes film festival, and Iris Knobloch, its president, have announced an official selection for 2026 that is strong on top-flight auteurs but notably short on US studio titles.
The 79th edition of the event, which runs from May 12th until May 23rd, will feature films from such festival favourites as Asghar Farhadi, Andrey Zvyagintsev, Pedro Almodóvar, Hirokazu Kore-eda, László Nemes and Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Stars such as John Travolta, Gillian Anderson, Rami Malek, Barbra Streisand and Isabelle Huppert look set to walk the carpet. This year’s jury is headed by the Korean film-maker Park Chan-wook.
Pawel Pawlikowski, the Polish director of Ida and Cold War, returns to Cannes with an intriguing study of the German writer Thomas Mann entitled Fatherland. Hanns Zischler plays the author of Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain. Sandra Hüller, among the busiest actors of the era, appears as his daughter Erika Mann. That film has already topped early predictions for likely winner of the Palme d’Or.
Also at short odds is Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur. The Russian director of Loveless and Leviathan, who was hospitalised for 11 months in 2021 after developing nosocomial sepsis, returns to Cannes eight years after his last appearance in competition with a political thriller set among Moscow’s business community.
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The Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, who took the Palme d’Or in 2018 with Shoplifters, appears in competition with a science-fiction drama entitled Sheep in the Box. The great Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, somehow never a Palme d’Or winner, presents a characteristically lavish tragicomedy entitled Bitter Christmas.
The Iranian master Asghar Farhadi, an Oscar-winner for both The Salesman and A Separation, is back with a French-language drama starring Cannes royalty: Vincent Cassel, Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira and Catherine Deneuve.
Efira will also appear in All of a Sudden, from Ryusuke Hamaguchi, the Japanese maestro whose Drive My Car received a best-picture Oscar nomination in 2022.
Unusually, the main competition features only one American director. Ira Sachs, known for indie hits such as Passages and Love Is Strange, directs Rami Malek, Rebecca Hall and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in a musical fantasy set during the Aids crisis in 1980s New York.
There was much anticipation that Jane Schoenbrun, director of the cult sensation I Saw the TV Glow, would be in the Palme d’Or race, but her racily titled Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, a postmodern slasher starring Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder, has ended up in the Un Certain Regard sidebar.
The festival will be presenting honorary Palmes d’Or to Streisand – sure to provide some arresting material – and to the New Zealand director Peter Jackson. Steven Soderbergh presents a documentary on John Lennon’s last interview. Ron Howard has a film on the photographer Richard Avedon. John Travolta is to launch his directorial debut, Propeller One-Way Night Coach, in the Cannes Premiere section. His fellow actor Andy Garcia will also be wearing a director’s hat. His crime thriller Diamond, playing out of competition, stars Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman alongside the director.
Frémaux confirmed that some films are still to be announced. “There’s one film you’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s not there!’ But it will be there, I’m telling you,” he said, cryptically. “It’s not fake suspense, but there’s always contracts that are not yet signed, things that should be settled before the show in Cannes.”
Variety was among those reading this as a possible reference to James Gray’s Paper Tiger, a tale of the Russian Mafia starring Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver. Or was he perhaps referencing Kantemir Balagov’s Butterfly Jam, study of the Circassian diaspora in New Jersey with Barry Keoghan and Riley Keough? Both could be late entries.
Clio Barnard’s I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, starring the Irish actors Anthony Boyle, Daryl McCormack and Lola Petticrew, feels like a likely inclusion in the Directors Fortnight sidebar, details of which will be announced in a few days.
This is a rare Cannes without a blockbuster studio premiere – Top Gun: Maverick, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning all recently debuted on the Croisette – but Frémaux sensed no shift in strategy. “The US is present, though studios less so,” he said. “There is an independent cinema outside of Los Angeles that still exists. Cinema artists will be there.”
One thing is certain. What seem like minutes after the last Oscar ceremony has begun, awards punters are already poring over these runes for clues to the 2027 race.
79th Cannes film festival: Official selection
COMPETITION
- Minotaur, Andrey Zvyagintsev
- The Beloved, Rodrigo Sorogoyen
- The Man I Love, Ira Sachs
- Fatherland, Pawel Pawlikowski
- Moulin, Lazlo Nemes
- Histoires de la Nuit, Lea Mysius
- Fjiord, Cristian Mungiu
- Notre Salut, Emmanuel Marre
- Gentle Monster, Marie Kreutzer
- Hope, Na Hong-jin
- Nagi Notes, Koji Fukada
- Sheep in the Box, Hirokazu Kore-eda
- Garance, Jeanne Herry
- The Unknown, Arthur Harari
- Sudden, Ryusuke Hamaguchi
- The Dreamed Adventure, Valeska Grisebach
- Coward, Lukas Dhont
- La Bola Negra, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi
- Parallel Stories, Asghar Farhadi
- Bitter Christmas, Pedro Almodóvar
- A Woman’s Life, Charline Bourgeois-Taquet
UN CERTAIN REGARD
- All the Lovers in the Night, Yukiko Sode
- La Más Dulce, Laïla Marrakchi
- Club Kid, Jordan Firstman
- Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Jane Schoenbrun
- Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep, Rakan Mayasi
- Everytime, Sandra Wollner
- Meltdown, Manuela Martelli
- I’ll Be Gone in June, Katharina Rivilis
- I Am Always Your Maternal Animal, Valentina Maurel
- Congo Boy, Rafiki Fariala
- Iron Boy, Louis Clichy
- Benimana, Marie-Clementine Dusabejambo
- Elephants in the Fog, Abinash Bikram Shah
- Ula, Viesturs Kairišs
- Words of Love, Rudi Rosenberg
OUT OF COMPETITION
- Her Private Hell, Nicolas Winding Refn
- Diamond, Andy Garcia
- The Electric Kiss, Pierre Salvadori
- La Bataille de Gaulle: L’Age de Fer, Antonin Baudry
- Karma, Guillaume Canet
- L’Objet du Delit, Agnes Jaoui
- L’Abandon, Vincent Garenq
CANNES PREMIERE
- Propeller One-Way Night Coach, John Travolta
- Kokurojo: The Samurai and the Prisoner, Kiyoshi Kurosawa
- Heimsuchung, Volker Schlondorff
- El Partido, Juan Cabral and Santiago Franco
- When the Night Falls, Daniel Auteuil
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
- John Lennon: The Last Interview, Steven Soderbergh
- Avedon, Ron Howard
- Les Survivants du Che, Christophe Réveille
- Les Matins Merveilleux, Avril Besson
- Cantona, Ben Nicholas and David Tryhorn
- L’Affaire Marie-Claire, Yvo Muller, Lauriane Escaffre
- Rehearsals for a Revolution, Pegah Ahangarani
MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS
- Roma Elastica, Bertrand Mandico
- Jim Queen, Nicolas Athane and Marco Nguyen
- Full Phil, Quentin Dupieux
- Colony, Yeon Sang-ho
- Sanguine, Marion Le Coroller
