Mystery has traditionally been revealed a month before the festival begins, which will take place this year from May 12 to 23. 150 journalists, many from international media, gathered this Thursday at 11 am at the Pathé Palace in Paris for the unveiling by Iris Knobloch, festival president, and Thierry Frémaux, general delegate, of the list of selected films across all sections. About sixty lucky ones were chosen, from 2,541 feature films from 141 countries viewed by the selection committee.
Some information was already shared about the 2026 selection. It was known that two honorary Palme d’Or awards will be given to Barbra Streisand and New Zealand director Peter Jackson (“The Lord of the Rings”), that the jury will be chaired by South Korean Park Chan-wook (a sign of his country’s central position in cinema, winning the Palme d’Or in 2019 with “Parasite”), and that the romantic comedy “La Vénus électrique” directed by Frenchman Pierre Salvadori, starring Anaïs Demoustier and Gilles Lellouche, will be shown at the opening night on May 12 – it will be released in theaters the following day.
Twenty-one feature films compete in the main category, the competition for the Palme d’Or. Eleven of them are “entrants,” who have never been part of the competition, like Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen, who made a huge impression in 2022 with “As Bestas” and will present “El ser querido” with Javier Bardem.
These eleven newcomers will walk the red carpet alongside established names like Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, who, unable to film in his country, made his new film, “Histoires paralleles,” in Paris with Virginie Efira, Isabelle Huppert, and Catherine Deneuve; Japanese Kore-Eda; Russian filmmaker in exile Andrei Zviaguintsev; or Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, in his seventh competition selection, with “Autofiction.” Despite previously being a jury president, he surprisingly has never won the Palme d’Or. Maybe this year?
Five French filmmakers are represented, including Jeanne Herry with “Garance,” or Arthur Harari, co-writer of the screenplay for “Anatomie d’une chute,” for “L’Inconnue” with Léa Seydoux and Niels Schneider. A film described by Thierry Frémaux as “extremely unique,” “one of the most discussed in the selection committee.”
While France and Spain have strong representation (five and three films in competition, respectively), notable absentees include Italy (no films in the running for the Palme) and especially the United States. Only one American is in the competition, Ira Sachs, for “The Man I Love.”
Thierry Frémaux attributes this gap to the fact that, faced with “many changes, mergers, acquisitions,” the Hollywood industry produces fewer “Cannes-typical” works, grandiose auteur films like those of Paul Thomas Anderson or Francis Ford Coppola.
The event will also feature numerous out-of-competition premieres. We will discover the first feature film by John Travolta (“Night Flight to Los Angeles”), new films by Quentin Dupieux (“Full Phil”), Agnès Jaoui (“L’Objet du délit”), Guillaume Canet (“Karma” with Marion Cotillard), and Charlotte Gainsbourg as Gisèle Halimi in “L’Affaire Marie-Claire,” Simon Abkarian as General de Gaulle (“La Bataille de Gaulle: L’âge de fer”)…
Five female directors are among the 21 filmmakers competing. Two of them have roots in the region. Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet, 40, who grew up in Royan, impressed in 2021 with “Les Amours d’Anaïs” and now returns with “La Vie d’une femme,” starring Léa Drucker.
Léa Mysius, 37, who spent her childhood in Bordeaux, will unveil the highly anticipated “Histoires de la nuit,” adapted from Laurent Mauvignier’s novel.
