Cannes 2026 | 19 Must-See Films In The 79th Edition

The world’s biggest film festival, Cannes is every cinephile’s ultimate destination, a cinema heaven if there ever existed one. The debates that reverberate beyond the festival’s duration, as to which films deserved a Competition slot, besides the prizes, are integral to the experience. In a fall from last year, there are only five female directors in the upcoming edition’s Main Competition: Germany’s Valeska Grisebach, France’s Jeanne Herry, Lea Mysius and Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet, and Austria’s Marie Kreutzer. The 2025 Competition slate saw seven films directed by women, tying 2023’s then-record-breaking slate of female directed-films.

This year’s Palme d’Or race has also been called out for its glaring absence of Black and Latin American representation. Instead, the Competition is brimming with celebrated auteurs such as Almodovar, Farhadi and Kore-eda alongside Paweł Pawlikowski, Kore-eda Hirokazu, László Nemes and Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Neon is aggressively circling the top prize again for what would be an unprecedented seventh year in a row. The American distributor has already bought eight films slated to premiere at the festival.

South Korean master Park Chan-wook will preside over the Main Competition jury. Two Honorary Palmes d'Or will be awarded to New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson and to American actress, singer and filmmaker Barbra Streisand.

The 79th edition runs from 12 to 23 May, 2026.

Two-time Oscar-nominated Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev returns with his first feature since 2017’s Loveless. Shot in Latvia, Minotaur is a political fable weaving crime thriller and classical elements, exploring the emotional and moral collapse of a businessman under the weight of personal and political crises. His last two films, Loveless and Leviathan (2014), world premiered in competition at Cannes and won the Jury Prize and best screenplay, respectively. His debut film The Return won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2003.

Abinash Bikram Shah’s feature debut marks a historic first for Nepal in the Un Certain Regard section. Set in a small Nepalese village nestled in a forest populated by wild elephants, the film follows Pirati, the matriarch of a community of transgender women. She aspires to a normal life with Master, the man she loves. But when one of her wards disappears, she must choose between love and responsibility to her community. Elephants in the Fog has had a long illustrious incubation journey, from Busan’s Asian Project Market to Hubert Bals Fund to Sundance Screenwriters’ Lab to World Cinema Fund.

Shah’s short, Lori, received a Special Mention in Cannes’ short film competition in 2022. He also co-wrote Min Bahadur Bham’s 2024 Golden Bear-vying Shambhala. Shah also wrote Deepak Rauniyar’s 2012 film, Highway, that featured in Berlinale Panorama.

Japanese master Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s first French-language feature stars Virginie Efira as a nursing home director who defies her team by adopting a humane care technique called Humanitude. Her life is transformed when she meets a terminally ill Japanese playwright, played by Tao Okamoto. The three-hour-plus drama is rumoured to be the longest Competition film. Loosely inspired by a published correspondence between a philosopher with terminal cancer and a medical anthropologist, the film’s US rights have been bought by Neon. Hamaguchi won Cannes’ screenplay award for Drive My Car before landing the best international film Oscar in 2022. His last film, Evil Does Not Exist (2023), won the Grand Jury Prize at Venice as well as the FIPRESCI Award.

The long wait for Na Hong-jin devotees is finally over. The South Korean auteur behind classics like The Wailing (2016) and The Chaser (2008) brings his sci-fi thriller, Hope, to Competition. In Hope Harbor, a remote village near the Demilitarized Zone, police chief Bum-seok receives alarming news from local youths that a tiger has appeared. As the village erupts into panic, Bum-seok is forced to confront a reality beyond belief. Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander feature alongside South Korean stars Hwang Jung-min and Hoyeon. Hope has been shot by cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo (Snowpiercer, Parasite).

At the press conference while declaring the lineup, Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux teased that Hope “constantly changes genres” to capture a story which narrates “no part of history that’s ever been told before.” Hope marks Na’s fourth return to the festival, his first in Competition.

Jane Schoenbrun broke out with Sundance hit, I Saw The TV Glow (2024). Their new meta film stars Hannah Einbinder as a queer director who, tasked with remaking an old slasher franchise, gets into a psychosexual quest with its “final girl” played by Gillian Anderson. The two women plunge into a bloody world of desire, delirium and terror. This promises to be a wild ride. Schoenbrun’s film is chosen as Un Certain Regard’s opening title. Later in October, their debut novel Public Access Afterworld will be published.

Oscar-winning Polish filmmaker Pawlikowski returns with Fatherland starring Sandra Hüller, centring on the relationship between the writer Thomas Mann, played by Hanns Zischler, and his actress, journalist and rally driver daughter Erika, played by Hüller, as they embark on a Cold War-era road trip across a Germany in ruins. Pawlikowski won the best director prize at the festival in 2018 for Cold War, which also garnered him a Best Director Oscar nomination. The Oscar-nominated Hüller won a Silver Bear for best leading performance for Rose in February this year, her second win.

Berlin School auteur Valeska Grisebach’s simmering Western (2017) was one of the great films of the decade, eventually winning the German Film Critics’ Award for Best Feature Film. While that premiered in Un Certain Regard, her latest is an upshot into a main Competition berth. Set in the border region between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, it follows a woman who enters into a dubious deal to help an old friend and ends up confronting her own desires and her past.

Leading Argentine auteur Lisandro Alonso’s Double Freedom (La Libertad Doble) is a sequel to his 2001 debut, Freedom (La Libertad), which had premiered in Un Certain Regard, and quietly trailed Misael, an Argentine woodcutter simply going about his day. 25 years later, Misael is still at it, still working alone in the forest and still free—until his older sister falls ill and he’s summoned to care for her. Double Freedom will premiere in Directors’ Fortnight, Cannes’ most adventurous parallel section.

Best known for his close work with Apichatpong Weerasethakul as an assistant director, from Tropical Malady (2004) through Memoria (2021), Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s debut directorial is slated for Directors’ Fortnight. Nine members of one family aim to spend a full day visiting nine temples in order to build up the good karma they hope will prolong their grandmother’s life. Apichatpong has produced the Thai drama.

Lukas Dhont’s third film, his first period piece, follows a Belgian soldier grappling with cowardice and heroism in the trenches of WWI. The Belgian director is a Cannes favourite, his debut Girl (2018) bagging the Camera d’Or, his previous Close (2022) fetching the Grand Prix. Calling it his most ambitious project, Dhont said in a statement that Coward was “about love and death, creation and destruction.”

Inspired by an unfinished play by García Lorca, Spain’s beloved filmmaking duo Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo arrive with their second feature. Spanning three years in Spanish history, 1932, 1937 and 2017, The Black Ball explores the interconnected lives of three gay men. Penelope Cruz and Glenn Close are part of the ensemble cast.

A widely predicted inclusion, Léa Mysius’ adaptation of Laurent Mauvignier’s novel circles a family beset by strangers who descend on their village during a birthday celebration. Mysius’ feature debut, Ava (2017) premiered in Critics’ Week and 2022’s The Five Devils in Directors’ Fortnight. The Birthday Party is a step up, landing a Competition berth.

Palme d’Or-winning Japanese master Kore-eda Hirokazu returns to Cannes Competition for the eighth time with Sheep in the Box. The film heads into a near future when a couple (Haruka Ayase from Hirokazu’s Our Little Sister and Daigo Yamamoto) lose their young son, he’s replaced by a humanoid made in his image (Kuwaki Rimu). Neon has acquired the North American rights.

Romanian auteur Cristian Mungiu’s new drama reunites Oscar nominees Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan after A Different Man (2024). The two star as a couple in Norway at war with their neighbours. Fjord marks Mungiu’s English-language debut. This is his fifth time competing for the Palme d’Or, being its first Romanian winner in 2007 for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Reinsve is also a Cannes darling, breaking out with her Best Actress-winning turn in The Worst Person in the World (2021).

Russian director Kantemir Balagov’s previous feature Beanpole (2019) won both the FIPRESCI and the award for Best Director in Un Certain Regard. His highly awaited latest, Butterfly Jam, brings a starry ensemble, led by Barry Keoghan, Monica Belluci, Harry Melling and Riley Keough. The film follows the 15-year-old Pyteh, an aspiring professional wrestler who helps out at the Circassian restaurant in New Jersey run by his father and his aunt. One of his dad’s misguided schemes blows up in his face and Pyteh will have to come to terms with the man his father truly is. Butterfly Jam is the opening film at Directors’ Fortnight.

India’s sole Cannes selection this year is FTII student Mehar Malhotra’s Punjabi short film Parchaave Massiah Raatan De (Shadows of the Moonless Nights), selected in the La Cinef section. The 24-minute film follows Rajan (Prayrak Mehta), a night-shift factory worker who struggles with extreme fatigue and the harsh realities of city life. La Cinef focuses on emerging voices from film schools. With this, FTII has now had five student films featured in La Cinef since 2017.

Pedro Almodovar’s sixth Competition film marks his return to Spanish cinema after a slew of English-language missteps, despite a baffling Golden Lion win for The Room Next Door (2024). Musing on ageing, grief and artistry, this auto-fictional melodrama entwines two tales: one circling a screenwriter, the other the artwork she spins. Bitter Christmas already opened in Spanish cinemas to glowing reviews. Almodovar has called Bitter Christmas “the film where I’ve been cruellest with myself.”

After winning the Oscar for co-writing Anatomy of a Fall with his partner, Justine Triet, Arthur Harari takes over the director’s reins (with Triet as a co-writer) for The Unknown. In the twisted psychological drama, a photographer (Niels Schneider) has a one-night stand with a stranger (Léa Seydoux) and bizarrely wakes up in her body. Harari has described it as a blend of “realistic urban chronicle, fantasy film, investigation, melodrama and daydream.”

Twin filmmakers Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri’s Eyimofe (This Is My Desire) was rapturously received when it premiered in Berlinale Forum in 2020 and then went on to win five Africa Movie Academy Awards. The film is now part of the Criterion Collection. The brothers’ follow-up, Clarissa, is a reimagining of Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway transposed to contemporary Lagos, and it stars Sophie Okonedo, David Oyelowo, Ayo Edebiri and Nikki Amuka-Bird. Neon has acquired worldwide rights to Clarissa.