10 Movies To Look Out For From The 2026 Cannes Film Festival
After two weeks of screenings in darkened rooms, the 79th Cannes Film Festival came to a close on May 23rd.
It was a fortnight of parties on sunny beaches and low-key controversy (why did John Travolta decide to wear that beret?), and it all culminated in the awarding of the Palme d’Or to Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord.
Set in a remote part of Norway, this is a film about a Romanian family whose traditional approach to parenting puts them in the crosshairs of the country’s child welfare system (more on it below). It was also the Romanian’s second time winning the prize – an accomplishment that puts him among a select crop of eight filmmakers that includes the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, Ken Loach, Ruben Östlund and Michel Haneke.
In the list below, I‘ve rounded up ten of the best movies to look out for from Cannes this year – a selection that includes a South Korean monster movie, a queer slasher experiment, and a sensational directorial debut from an actor-turned-filmmaker who frankly nobody expected a whole lot from.
Read on to learn a bit more about each of them and use the guide to keep an eye out for where to see them – whether in theatres or on services like AppleTV, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere.
The beloved New York filmmaker James Gray is best known for his recent genre films Lost City of Z and Ad Astra, but his new film Paper Tiger takes him back to the New York borough crime stories (Little Odessa and The Yards) that helped him make his name.
Boasting career best performances from Adam Driver and Miles Teller, and a delightful supporting turn from Scarlet Johansson, Paper Tiger tells the story of two brothers from Queens who decide to work together on a new business venture but end up on the wrong side of the Russian mob. Despite being beloved amongst critics and cinephiles, Gray’s work has never really landed with mainstream audiences and Oscar voters. Paper Tiger has the potential to change all that.
Jane Schoenbrun, the wildly talented Gen-Z filmmaker behind We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow, arrived at the Cannes Film Festival with one of the most hyped titles in the selection, and didn’t disappoint. Their new film is called Teenage Sex at Camp Miasma and trust me, it more than lives up to all the pulpy promise of that name.
The story follows an indie filmmaker (Hannah Einbinder) who’s been hired to reboot an ‘80s slasher franchise called Camp Miasma and decides to make something that’s roughly two parts Friday the 13th and one part Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. For this, she travels to meet the original film’s “final girl” – who is played, in full Norma Desmond mode, by Gillian Anderson. If you liked TV Glow or any kind of horror film that deconstructs itself in real time (think the more recent Scream movies), make sure to add this one to your watchlist.
After winning an Oscar for Best International Feature for his gorgeous 2022 film Drive My Car, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi pretty much cemented his reputation as one of the great international filmmakers of the decade.
Hamaguchi’s latest is called All of a Sudden and it follows the burgeoning friendship between the manager of a care home in Paris and a terminally ill playwright. At more than three hours long, it is a film that asks a lot of the audience but one which more than delivers in return. Best of all, it’s a hopeful and remarkably humane film that leaves you with no shortage of ideas to chew on.
One of the best discoveries at the festival this year was a Chilean thriller called The Meltdown. The story takes place in a ski lodge up high in the Andes where a precocious girl named Inez (played by the wonderful Maya O'Rourke) befriends a German skier, who then promptly disappears.
The story is also notably set in 1992, in the early days of the post-Pinochet era, when the country was still in the process of grieving – not least for the tens of thousands of people who disappeared during the notorious dictator’s reign. This is a stylish and gripping movie about a fascinating time in history, and one that boasts an undeniably endearing central performance from its nine-year-old star.
In the last few years, some of the biggest movies to blow up from the Cannes competition have been provocative genre flicks like The Substance and Titane. This year, the closest the selection came to a similar sensation was Na Hong-jin’s Hope, a South Korean monster movie which begins with a relentless 60-minute action sequence and ends with Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander playing slightly hokey-looking CGI aliens.
Outside of those plot points, the less said about this one the better – but if you’re keen to know what the vibe is like, make sure to check out Na’s previous film The Wailing or Bong Joon-ho’s Kaiju classic, The Host. I can’t say that it’s on the same level as either of those movies, but it certainly stuck out.
Nineteen years ago, Christian Mungiu became the toast of the festival and world cinema when he took home Romania’s first Palme d’Or for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. He returned this year with Fjord, his most ambitious project to date and one of the most divisive films in the entire selection.
Fjord, as the name might suggest, takes place in a remote village in Norway and boasts plenty of examples of the country’s famous natural beauty – but, intriguingly, it’s also a fascinating critique of certain aspects of the Nordic way of life. It might not be for everybody, but with a wonderful cast of local actors backing up Sentimental Value’s Renate Reinsve and the Winter Soldier himself, Sebastian Stan, this one has the potential to go all the way to the Oscars.
Since his breakout out with Keep the Lights On in 2012, Ira Sachs has become one of the most revered queer filmmakers of his generation. Last year, he enjoyed a minor critical hit with Peter Hujar’s Day, a wonderfully contained biopic on the eponymous photographer who died of complications resulting from HIV in 1987. Sachs returns to that era again with his new film The Man I Love, another biopic, although this time of a fictional New York theatre scene legend named Jimmy George – another queer artist who, as the film makes clear from the very beginning, will also die of that terrible disease by the time the credits roll.
Rami Malek stars in this one, but even if you’re not the Bohemian Rhapsody actor’s biggest fan there are plenty of wonderful performances in the supporting cast – not least from Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Peter Hujar alum Rebecca Hall. Come for those but stay for the gorgeous and beautifully crafted period design.
One of the quieter hits of this year’s festival, Low Expectations, is the directorial debut of Eivind Landsvik and boasts the acting debut of 2010s bedroom pop sensation Girl in Red – who gives a lovely and slightly meta performance as a once popular indie singer who’s had to take a job as an exam coordinator at a local high school.
It might sound lazy to compare any new Norwegian filmmaker to Joachim Trier, but given the Oslo setting, the colour, the humour, and the style of this film, it’s hard not to make the comparison – and we mean it in the best way possible. If you’re a fan of Trier’s films (like Worst Person in the World and Sentimental Value) or, better still, are a fan of Girl in Red’s music, this one is going to hit you right in the feels.
Another Cannes film that might have the legs to go all the way to next year’s Academy Awards is Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beloved, a movie that (also similar in some ways to Sentimental Value) follows the thawing of a frosty relationship between a famous filmmaker (played by Javier Bardem) and his eldest daughter.
The Beloved begins with Barden’s director offering the girl a role in his latest movie, and much of the action takes place during the film’s shoot. Given all that, this is naturally a great watch for anyone who enjoys films about filmmaking, but it also boasts Bardem’s best performance since No Country for Old Men. That film won the actor an Oscar in 2011. Don’t be surprised if this one puts him in the running again.
