Cannesgratulations!
From a doc on John Lennon's final interview to Adam Driver chasing the American Dream (and Russian Mafia) — here are the big titles at this year's festival
A black-and-white biopic on Thomas Mann that doubles as a father-daughter road-trip flick. Documentaries on Richard Avedon’s early career and John Lennon’s last interview, respectively. A South Korean thriller starring several of the country’s biggest stars, as well as the guy who played young Magneto in the X-Men films. A cryptic tale of xenophobia, paranoia, and the way that rumors lead to violence, featuring a bald Sebastian Stan. A drama about the early days of an epidemic in the 1980s, featuring a singing Rami Malek. A period-piece murder mystery set in feudal Japan involving a samurai and a prisoner, titled [checks notes] The Samurai and the Prisoner.
These are just a few of the films set to premiere at the 79th annual Cannes Film Festival starting May 12th, as well as the latest works from bona fide auteurs like Pedro Almodóvar (Bitter Christmas), Nicolas Winding-Refn (Her Private Hell), Hirokazu Kore-eda (Sheep in a Box), Asghar Farhadi (Parallel Tales) and James Gray (Paper Tiger). There’s a lot of catnip for cinephiles in this year’s lineup, in other words. And after poring through the competition titles, the big-title galas, the Un Certain Regard sidebar and the affiliated fests that run alongside the Big Show, we’ve come up with a breakdown of the must-see movies playing Cannes 2026. Here are the 22 films we can’t wait to see.
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‘All of a Sudden’
Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car) makes his French-language feature debut with this drama about the growing bond between a nursing-home director (Virginie Efira) and a playwright (Tao Okamoto) dying of cancer. Based loosely on the book You and I — The Illness Suddenly Got Worse, which collected correspondence between a philosopher and medical anthropologist as they waxed poetic on life, death, and love, this sounds like the ideal project for the mediative filmmaker. It’s tempting to point out the irony of a nearly three-and-a-half long film being titled All of a Sudden, but what’s that old saying about no bad movie being too short and no cinematic masterpiece being too long?
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‘Bitter Christmas’
Image Credit: Iglesias Mas/El Deseo The last time Pedro Almodóvar was at Cannes, he blessed us with his short A Strange Way of Life and answered a thousand ‘shipping prayers regarding Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke. The Spanish auteur returns with a tale of two timelines, one involving a commercial director (Bárbara Lennie) dealing with the death of her mother circa the beginning of the 21st century; and another, more contemporary narrative centered around an author (Leonardo Sbaraglia) trying to work his way out of a bad case of writer’s block. The connection between the two and the cannibalistic nature of autofiction is what drives this melodrama, which the director admits is “the film where I’ve been cruelest with myself.” (This from the guy who made Pain and Glory!) The reviews out of Spain, where the movie’s already opened, have been divisive; personally, we can’t wait to check this out.
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‘Avedon’
Image Credit: Courtesy of Richard Avedon/Imagine Entertainment/Cannes To say that Richard Avedon has had a huge impact on modern photography would be the equivalent of saying Michael Jordan made people take note of the art of slam dunking — his portraitures completely changed the way we view not just the famous, the fashionable, and the powerful but the power of the form itself. Ron Howard now gifts us with a documentary on the man himself, which examines his life, legacy, and extraordinary facility with a lens; the Apollo 13 director also apparently got his hands on a number of archival treasures, including a handful of never-seen-before Avedon shots.
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‘Butterfly Jam’
Image Credit: AR Content/Why Not Productions/Goodfellas The opening film of the Cannes-sanctioned side fest Director’s Fortnight, this English-language drama from Russian filmmaker Kantemir Balagov — who made the searing life-during-wartime parable Beanpole — stars Barry Keoghan and Riley Keough as the parents of a 16-year-old named Pyteh (Talha Akdogan). This immigrant kid works at the family diner in New Jersey and dreams of being a champion wrestler. Then Dad makes a rash decision that throws the whole clan into a tizzy, and the teen has to figure out how to navigate the emotional wreckage without falling apart himself. Monica Bellucci and Harry Melling costar.
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‘Club Kid’
Image Credit: Adam Newport-Berra/Cannes Film Festival I Love LA‘s Jordan Firstman writes, directs, and stars in what sounds like a moving — and raucous — story of an underground club promoter who unexpectedly finds out that he’s fathered a son. His life is naturally upended when this party dude is forced to care for his offspring. The title has multiple meanings! If Firstman’s feature debut is as funny and IDGAF-filled as the Instagram videos that first helped this prolific multihyphenate make his name, this should be one of the more buzzed-about entries in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section. Also on the dance floor: Cara Delevingne and Babylon‘s Diego Calva.
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‘Diamond’
Image Credit: CineSon Entertainment Speaking of triple threats, look who’s also hitting the Croisette with his latest turn behind the camera: Andy Garcia! The actor wrote and directed this neo-noir about a crime-solver named Joe Diamond, who down these mean Los Angeles streets he must go, who is neither tarnished nor afraid, yadda yadda yadda. It’s a passion project that Garcia has been working on for close to 15 years, and it sounds like a cross between an old-fashioned gumshoe tale and something slightly more metaphysical. Or, as Garcia’s character himself says (per the director), “Dreams are a way of escaping your reality, unless those dreams are your reality.” It sounds like the Untouchables star went through his Rolodex for the cast as well: Brendan Fraser, Bill Murray, Dustin Hoffman, Vicky Krieps, Demian Bechír, Rosemary DeWitt, Robert Patrick, Danny Huston.
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‘The Diary of a Chambermaid’
Chances are good that by the time you finish reading this blurb for the new film by Romanian director Radu Jude (Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World), he will have likely made three more; this puckish provocateur seems to be pumping out darkly funny, form-shattering movies at an insane rate. He’s now decided to take on Octave Mirbeau’s classic, oft-filmed story of young woman who takes a job as a servant in a rich, decadent household — but like his recent addition to the cinematic Dracula canon, it’s not an adaptation of a literary work so much as an anything-goes riff on social issues that uses the book as a starting point. Yes, a Romanian maid (Ana Dumitrascu) is hired by a family in Bordeaux. But she also becomes involved with a local theater company who’s putting on a production of The Diary of a Chambermaid, which makes her rethink her place in the world. Things allegedly only get more meta from there. It should be one of the gems of this year’s especially strong Director’s Fortnight section.
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‘Fatherland’
Image Credit: Agata Grzybowska/Mubi Project Hail Mary standout and expert Harry Styles interpreter Sandra Hüller costars in this biopic about author Thomas Mann, which concentrates on the exiled Death in Venice author taking a road trip from West Germany to East Germany during the height of the Cold War. Speaking of road trips: Mann is played by none other than Hanns Zischler, star of Wim Wenders’ 1976 classic Kings of the Road; Hüller plays his adult daughter and traveling companion, Erika Mann. And speaking of the cold war: This is directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, the extraordinary Polish filmmaker behind My Summer of Love, Ida, and — wait for it — the historical romantic drama Cold War, which won Pawlikowski the Best Director award at Cannes in 2018.
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‘Fjord’
Image Credit: MOBRA FILM A couple (Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve) move with their family to her small hometown in Norway. Soon, rumors begin to swirl around the village regarding the way these new residents behave with their kids; the fact that he’s Romanian only seems to fuel the locals’ mistrust. Any new work from Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) is reason enough to get excited, but the combination of these actors, this filmmaker, and a scenario brimming with mistrust, paranoia and good old-fashioned fear of the other is enough to cause uncontrollable salivating. Neon has already picked this up for distribution, so expect to hear a lot about this one as the year progresses.
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‘Gentle Monster’
Image Credit: Frederic Battier/Film AG Folks may remember Corsage, Marie Kreutzler’s 2022 historical drama that portrayed Empress Elisabeth of Austria as a feminist icon and punk-as-fuck subversive. The filmmaker comes back to Cannes with this dual tale of women under the influence of troubled men, as a pianist (Léa Seydoux) and a special investigator (Kleo‘s Jella Haase) struggle to deal with a burnt-out spouse and an ailing dad, respectively. Call it a hunch, but something tells us the monsters here will not turn out to be gentle ones.
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‘Her Private Hell’
Image Credit: NEON Welcome back, Nicolas Winding Refn! The Danish writer-director who never met a wound he didn’t wanna poke pops up at Cannes with his first movie in a decade (and his first long-form project since the 2022 Netflix series Copenhagen Cowboy), centered around a production of a female-centric sci-fi blockbuster. It just so happens that a serial killer has been targeting women near the hotel where the cast is staying at, which makes the actors more than a little nervous. Knowing NWR, the plot will likely go to some strange, surreal, and extremely neon-lit places. The cast includes Sophie Thatcher, Havana Rose Liu, Charles Melton, Dougray Scott, and Diego Calva (who, between this and Club Kid, may end up being the Parker Posey of this year’s Cannes).
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‘Hope’
Image Credit: Plus M Entertainment A strong contender for the film coming into Cannes 2026 with the loudest amount of buzz, this thriller from Na Hong-jin (The Chaser, The Wailing) finds a small town named Hope Harbor on high alert after a tiger is allegedly spotted in the area. A police chief prepares to confront the emergency of a predator running wild among the population, although it soon becomes clear that something far more sinister may be going on. The cast is a mix of both South Korean actors like superstar Hwang Jung-min (A Bittersweet Life) and international names like Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Mindhunter‘s Cameron Britton and Bones and All‘s Taylor Russell. The vibe is supposedly a cross between relentless and batshit.
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‘I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning’
Image Credit: Moonspub Films/BBC Films British filmmaker Clio Barnard tackles Keiran Goddard’s 2024 novel about five middle-class kids in Birmingham who all harbor big dreams of endlessly bright futures. Cut to their thirties, and things haven’t turned out as they planned, i.e. like most people’s lives. Tragedy also lurks right around the corner. We’re huge fans of Barnard’s past work, notably The Arbor and The Selfish Giant, and this sounds like the perfect match of artist and material.
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‘John Lennon : The Last Interview’
Image Credit: MUBI On December 8th, 1980, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were spending the day doing interviews to promote their new album Double Fantasy, including a cover story with the very publication you’re reading right now, as well as a long sitdown with a crew recording a chat for radio. By the end of the evening, Lennon would be murdered in front of his apartment building. Steven Soderbergh not only interviews a number of folks, including Yoko, who were there that day and witnessed a truly terrible historical moment. He also plays that entire audio interview in full, giving us a chance to hear some of the musician’s thoughts on where he was at — musically, creatively, personally — before his life was tragically cut short.
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‘The Man I Love’
Image Credit: Jac Martines Meet Jimmy George (Rami Malek), an entertainer who’s made a big name for himself in the downtown New York scene circa 1984. He’s also been diagnosed with AIDS, right at the moment when the epidemic is beginning to seriously escalate. But George refuses to go gently into that good night, and vows to keep performing onstage until he can no longer rage against the dying of the light. Filmmaker Ira Sachs (Passages) has been wanting to make this tribute to those artists who fought against public prejudices and government neglect during the disease’s horrifying first wave for close to a decade, and though Malek performs a few showstopping numbers, the film isn’t (as previously reported) a musical. But it is a “very personal film,” Sachs admits, and said that while he was struck by the loss in this story that reflected the experience of so many real-life members of the LGBTQ community, “I was also struck by the strength.”
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‘Paper Tiger’
Image Credit: Neon One of the more star-studded entries in this year’s festival, this tale of crime, punishment, and familial crises finds writer-director James Gray solidly in his comfort zone. Adam Driver and Miles Teller are brothers who go into business together and think they’ve got the perfect recipe for the American Success Story. Enter the Russian Mafia and, well, things get complicated. Scarlett Johansson is on hand as well. A late addition to Cannes’ competition lineup, it’s easily the most anticipated movie among both the awards-season reporters and fans of gritty, genre-inflected movies with a strong sense of character.
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‘Parallel Tales’
Image Credit: Memento Production Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) is said to have drawn inspiration from Krzysztof Kieslowski’s The Decalogue — specifically, the “thou shalt not commit adultery” episode — for his story about a writer (the mighty Isabelle Huppert) who begins watching her neighbors in order to overcome a creative block. She’s also hired a handsome young assistant (Adam Bessa), a move that will turn out to have some chaotic ramifications around the household. Virginie Efra, Catherine Deneuve and Vincent Cassel costar.
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‘The Samurai and the Prisoner’
Image Credit: Janus Films. Part old-school chambara and part murder-mystery whodunnit, the new film from Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Pulse, Cloud) follows a rogue samurai (Masahiro Motoki) who’s barricaded himself in a castle while fighting off his former lord’s army. Then someone is murdered inside this makeshift fortress, and the warrior must enlist a prisoner (Masaki Suda) who is an excellent military strategist to help identify the killer before he or she strikes again. Yes!
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‘Sheep in the Box’
Image Credit: Neon A grieving set of parents adopt an android that looks and speaks exactly like their late son — it’s the sort of scenario that screams “Black Mirror episode,” right? It’s not exactly the type of story you might usually expect from Japanese filmmaker Hirokasu Kore-eda (Shoplifters, After Life, Still Walking), even if he did once make a movie about a sex doll that comes to life. But the former Palm d’Or winner has long specialized in poignant stories of families in crisis and everyday people finding the strength to endure punishing twists of fate, and this sounds like a chance for him to explore grief, loss, and healing with just a hint of science fiction drizzled on top.
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‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’
Image Credit: Mubi Opening the Un Certain Regard section, the latest from cult filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow) follows a queer director (Hannah Einbinder) who nabs the plum assignment of remaking-slash-rebooting a classic slasher-flick franchise. Her dream is to get the original film’s lead actor (Gillian Anderson) involved in this new production; when the star agrees to participate, however, things begin to get weird. Very, very weird. Schoenbrun has said that they wanted this valentine to Eighties gorefests feel like a movie “I wish existed when I was a kid… a ‘sleepover classic’ that beckons to unsuspecting viewers from the horror section at the local video store.” SNL’s Sarah Sherman, Severance’s Zach Cherry, Sorry Baby’s Eva Victor, and Scream 7’s Jasmin Savoy Brown costar.
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‘The Unknown’
Image Credit: Neon If the name Arthur Harari rings a bell, it’s probably because he cowrote Anatomy of a Fall with his partner, filmmaker Justine Triet. He also collaborated with his younger brother, Lucas, on the 2024 graphic novel La cas David Zimmerman, about a photographer who sleeps with a woman on New Year’s Eve and wakes up in her body. But despite some narrative similarities, Harari’s latest directorial effort isn’t an adaptation — rather, it’s what he dubs “an outgrowth of the comic,” with Léa Seydoux and Niels Schneider playing their own variation on this scenario. How different or similar the two works are is, as of press time, completely unknown. [Rimshot] But we’re particularly excited about this one regardless.
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‘Victorian Psycho’
Image Credit: Bleecker Street We do love a Gothic thriller, and this Un Certain Regard entry from Zachary Wigon (Sanctuary) sounds like a doozy: The year is 1853. The setting is Ensor House, a remote manor filled with properly dark hallways and shadowy corners. The latest addition’s the estate’s staff is one Winifred Notty (Longlegs‘ Maika Monroe), a governess. Strange things are soon afoot shortly after her arrival, which may or may not be a coincidence. Given our deep knowledge of this subgenre and this evocative title, we’re gonna opt for “not a coincidence.” Also skulking around in various states of 19th century gloom: Thomasin Mckenzie, Jason Isaacs, Ruth Wilson, and Hamnet‘s Jacobi Jupe.