The Most Anticipated Films of Cannes Film Festival 2026

As the line-up for the 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival was announced yesterday morning, there was a notable absence of American studio films. Compared to last year’s star-studded red carpet, the 2026 festival feels firmly geared towards auteurs, particularly those working in international independent films. Master of the subversive thriller Park Chan-wook will preside over the jury. Here is a selection of the most anticipated titles to look forward to during the festival, which runs from May 12 to 23.

In competition

As the sole American director in competition, Ira Sachs will premiere The Man I Love, a musical fantasy starring Remi Malek, set against the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York. The film  also stars Rebecca Hall, who recently appeared in Sach’s well-received Peter Hujar’s Day.

Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland is another notable addition. Sandra Hüller stars as Erika, the daughter of Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (played by Hanns Zischler), as the two embark on a road trip across Germany at the height of the Cold War. Pawlikowski is a festival favorite: he won the best director prize in 2018 for Cold War.

Renate Reinsve returns to Cannes following last year’s hit Sentimental Value, and her 2021 Best Actress win for The Worst Person in the World, this time in Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord, opposite Sebastian Stan. A Romanian-Norwegian family’s move to Norway is unsettled when their daughter arrives at school with unexplained bruises, triggering tensions within their new community. Another of the festival’s favorite filmmakers, Mungiu won the Palme d’Or in 2007 for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.

Arthur Harari, co-writer of Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall, returns to the Croisette with The Unknown. The film, starring Léa Seydoux and Niels Schneider, follows a reclusive photographer who becomes obsessed with a mysterious woman, only to wake up in her body the next day.

Pedro Almodóvar will also present Amarga Navidad (Bitter Christmas), a portrait of a woman abandoned by her partner over the holidays, starring Bárbara Lennie and Leonardo Sbaraglia.

Midnight Screenings 

Among the Midnight Screenings, Woody Harrelson and Kristen Stewart lead Quentin Dupieux’s Full Phil, an absurdist comedy in which a reclusive billionaire’s tightly controlled world begins to unravel in increasingly surreal ways.

Bertrand Mandico’s Roma Elastica drifts through a dreamlike 1980s Rome, following a fading diva in a world of shifting identities, with Marion Cotillard and Noémie Merlant at its center.

Cannes Premiere 

Kiyoshi Kurosawa, best known for Cure and Pulse, returns with Kokurojo: The Samurai and the Prisoner. Set in 16th-century Japan, the film, starring Munetaka Aoki and Tasuku Emoto, follows a captive who forms an uneasy bond with a lord inside a besieged castle.

Also premiering is Propeller One-Way Night Coach, directed by and starring John Travolta. Based on his 1997 book, the film follows a young aviation enthusiast and his mother on a cross-country flight to Hollywood, shaped by a series of unexpected encounters along the way.

Out of Competition 

Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell plunges back into the director’s preferred terrain: desire, violence and control, rendered in high-gloss neon, starring Sophie Thatcher (Yellow Jackets) and Charles Melton (May December).

Another notable addition to Out of Competition is Andy Garcia’s Diamond which gathers Brendan Fraser, Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman in a contemporary noir crime drama. The premise seems simple – a man haunted by his past uses his wit to solve crimes – but the ensemble alone makes it one to watch.