Who will win the Palme at Cannes? [2026 edition]

Bring it!

Not gonna get you a diamond ring
That sort of gift don't mean anything
It's a Sheep in a Box

thanks, jaymc!

Apparently Hamaguchi's film All of a Sudden is over 3 hours long and Grisebach's The Dreamed Adventure is just under 3 hours. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Long films as slow cinema can be entrancing, but most films don't warrant that kind of length

Venice Film Festival’s Alberto Barbera has talked about the shift recently to longer films

I just watched Marty Supreme, I was determined to finish it, but it felt like torture to endure 2.5 hours of it

so what i'm hearing is bad films are too long? but not good ones?

~3 hours might be somewhere around average length for Hamaguchi, to be fair. Perhaps not tooooo alarming. (Admittedly such a stat would heavily skewed by that 5-ish (?) hour one.)

xp, I guess what I'm saying is that if films aren't specifically and intentionally made as subdued slow cinema (and I don't believe any of the competition films are, but I'm willing to be surprised), then yes, most films are too long

I really liked Drive My Car, which was 3 hours long. All of a Sudden is longer than that. I may be worth the length, we'll see

*It

I wrote in my review of Asako I & II back in 2018, that even though it was two hours long, it felt a bit short. And that since Happy Hour felt too long, the sweet spot for Hamaguchi was probably three hours. I felt pretty validated by Drive My Car. Evil Does Not Exist felt like a short to me, even though at one hour 45 it was obviously a feature film. He just takes his time. Although he is pretty good at making short films too.

Yes agree, one of my favorite films of his is just 38 minutes long. It is titled Heaven Is Still Far Away (2016)

Jury:

Park Chan-wook (President), Demi Moore, Isaach De Bankolé, Laura Wandel, Paul Laverty, Stellan Skarsgård, Ruth Negga, Diego Céspedes, Chloé Zhao

I thought competition films generally debuted at Cannes? The Almodovar has been on general release in Spain since March.

^ I wondered about that! (eg. happened to notice something like 20,000 user ratings on Letterboxd already.)

Official rules say that films must "not have been screened elsewhere than their home country" so an earlier Spanish premiere is allowed. Don't remember this loophole being used in recent times but maybe less noticeable with some countries.

Apparently, most Almodovar films premiere in Spain before they hit the festivals. Perhaps his status in Spain is so certain that he doesn't really need whatever boost a potential festival win will bring about.

Not up for competition obv., but look what's been announced for screening:

https://thefilmstage.com/new-restoration-of-ken-russells-the-devils-leads-cannes-classics-2026-lineup/

some Cannes stories

regarding Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (UCR): I love the idea of this movie and am looking forward to it. That review in THR makes it sound like a film about an isolated alienated person longing to achieve sexual intimacy, which is something I can relate to

Balagov’s Butterfly Jam(also in UCR) is being described as very uneven

Apparently Herzog’s Bucking Fastard starring the Mara sisters was slated for competition until at the last minute Lukas Dhont finished his most recent film Coward (a WWI film) and submitted it, so Herzog’s film was bumped by that and offered a position in a sidebar. He decided to withdraw his film from Cannes entirely

Neil Young (https://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/reviews/cannes-2026-palme-dor-betting/) currently has Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beloved (7/2 odds) in first place, followed closely by Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur (9/2 odds).

His constantly changing odds are interesting and are kind of a sense of the current discourse, but he’s usually wrong in the end

Only just now remembering that Sorogoyen was the The Beasts dude. *adds The Beloved to watch-list.*

The first reviews from the competition have started coming out

Kôji Fukada’s Nagi Notes is the story of sisters-in-law, and architect and a sculptor, who become friends after the architect gets divorced and moves to the small town Nagi in the Okayama Prefecture. It sounds delicately drawn, about women asserting their sense of self in a patriarchal culture. It has gotten mostly good but also some mixed reviews

From what I can gather, this is something like his 10th feature length film. He was previously at Cannes in 2016 with Harmonium, for which he won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize. I have seen that film, it is a very heavy family drama. It is available on Kanopy in some locations for those who are interested (some his other films are, too). This film sounds much lighter. I'm looking forward to it

The first reviews from the competition have started coming out

Kôji Fukada’s Nagi Notes is the story of sisters-in-law, and architect and a sculptor, who become friends after the architect gets divorced and moves to the small town Nagi in the Okayama Prefecture. It sounds delicately drawn, about women asserting their sense of self in a patriarchal culture. It has gotten mostly good but also some mixed reviews

From what I can gather, this is something like his 10th feature length film. He was previously at Cannes in 2016 with Harmonium, for which he won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize. I have seen that film, it is a very heavy family drama. It is available on Kanopy in some locations for those who are interested (some his other films are, too). This film sounds much lighter. I'm looking forward to it

I don't know how that posted twice, sorry

The second is Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s A Woman’s Life (a very generic title). It is her second film and it is her first time in competition. It apparently is a character study of a successful middle-aged woman. It has also gotten mixed reviews. I don’t know much about it.

Her first film, Anaïs in Love, was in the Special Screenings section of Critics’ Week in 2021

The third is Pawel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, a story about Thomas Mann returning to Germany from Los Angeles after WWII to accept an award in Weimar, part of Russian occupied East Germany, around the time in 1949 that his gay son committed suicide. His relationship with his daughter (Sandra Hüller) is very conflicted. David Ehrlich describes it as a road movie chiseled to within an inch of its life. It has also gotten mixed reviews.

This is his third film. His second film, Cold War (2019), won the Cannes Best Director award and was nominated for an Oscar for best directing. Like both his first two movies, this was filmed in black and white in the Academy aspect ratio (1.37:1)

A common theme among these films seems to be that they are some of the shorter films in competition

Pawlikowski did a bunch of films before Ida. A lot of documentaries, worth seeing, and some british films, not really worth seeing, kinda europudding. I wrote in my review of Cold War, that he loves to make films about artists traveling, and that indeed seems to be what Fatherland is about as well. He even did a documentary called Dostoyevsky’s Travels, which is about his great-grandson, who is a truckdriver. Something about artists and travels, he loves it as much as Radu Jude loves making films about commercials.

New Radu Jude premiering today, btw. Can't wait to see the reviews :)

Fatherland has received surprisingly good reviews in Germany so far, where commentators are usually quick to leap on perceived inaccuracies in movies that depict key figures in German cultural history.

Sandra Hüller's performance in particular seems destined for prize nominations.

apparently the Farhadi is getting savaged?

She plays Thomas Mann? xpost?

Heh, no, although I'd pay good money at the cinema to see Sandra Hüller's portrayal of TM. She plays Mann's daughter Erika in Vaterland.

Those Mann kids were fucked up!

xxxp Frederik, Pawlikowski's earlier films were TV movies, though. I love your idea that his films are about artists and travels, and that Radu Jude's films are about commercials

When I made that post about Fatherland, the early reviews were mixed, but since then there has been a flood of positive reviews, and it has very high composite scores on the jury grids of Screen International, Ion Cinema, and the International Film Society. I loved Ida and Cold War and Thomas Mann is one of my favorite authors so I will watch it with interest. The cinematography in his films is always beautiful.

Asghar Farhadi's Parallel Tales has been getting savaged, but the review in Indiewire described in a way that made it sound like Kiarostami to me, so I'm very interested. This is his fourth time in competition, and he's already won Screenplay for The Salesman and the Grand Prix for A Hero.

From what I'm reading, the early reviews of Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's All of a Sudden are mostly raves, despite its 3 hour 16 minute length. This is his third time in competition. He won the screenplay award for Drive My Car. It sounds like this will likely win the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury (highlighting themes of reconciliation, dignity and peace) if nothing else

Justin Firstman (an actor in I Love LA, a show I loved but also hated) just screened his first film Club Kid in UCR and it sounds pretty good

Marie Kreutzer, who was previously in UCR with Corsage starring Vicki Krieps, is in competition for the first time with Gentle Monster, a film in which a concert pianist played by Léa Seydoux, a mother of a young son, finds out that her husband is a pedophile. I've tried not to read more than that

*Jordan Firstman* sorry

I saw Marie Kreutzer's 'The Ground Beneath My Feet' at Berlin in 2019, it's good but it's a lot like 'Toni Erdmann', and not quite as good. 'Corsage' was better, but I don't think she's quite there yet. It's a good thing that people don't have to make two masterpieces out of competition before Cannes will include them, though. Which was especially true for women until very recently.

I'm curious about Fatherland despite not liking Ida and Cold War at all.

I really can't think of a lot of things to dislike about Ida and Cold War. It might be what I like the least about them.

The Radu Jude remake of 'Diary of a Chamber Maid' is of course about a Romanian immigrant in France. Sounds really good. Lisandro Alonsos new is a sequel to La Libertad, it seems?

The Radu Jude remake of 'Diary of a Chamber Maid' is of course about a Romanian immigrant in France. Sounds really good. Lisandro Alonsos new is a sequel to La Libertad, it seems?

looks like mixed reactions to the Kore-eda

From what I'm reading, the early reviews of Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's All of a Sudden are mostly raves, despite its 3 hour 16 minute length.

Yeah, I've seen a couple of absolute adorations. Although Peter Bradshaw (fwiw) gave it 3/5 and called it a little "too precious." I've read that it's ultimately pretty uplifting, which is maybe why the crowd loved it so much. But great movies can be uplifting, sure. I'm game.

Hamaguchi is right up there with Pawlikowski right now on the jury grids and in terms of general sentiment.

Hamaguchi is right up there with Pawlikowski right now on the jury grids and in terms of general sentiment.

I've been in interested in seeing La Libertad which screened in UCR in 2001, but there's no way to watch it in the US right now. La Libertad Doble is now in Directors' Fortnight

Rodrigo Sorogoyen is in competition with The Beloved, his seventh full-length theatrical feature film. It is his first time at Cannes. The description of it makes it sound like Sentimental Value from last year, but Sorogoyen has a much rougher sense of conflict

His 2022 film The Beasts is possibly his most famous to date. It is very intense. It is a story of an increasingly frightening and violent dispute between neighbors in the hinterlands of Galicia, part of ‘empty Spain’. It is worth a watch. It is on Mubi for those of you who have a subscription

The description of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s film Sheep in the Box reminds me a little of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Klara and the Sun. It is about a family that accepts and starts to love an AI simulacrum of their dead son. It has gotten mixed reviews, but I don’t know, it sounds interesting to me.

This is seventh(!) time for him in competition, and he already won the Palme in 2018 for Shoplifters, as well as many other awards

I really can't think of a lot of things to dislike about Ida and Cold War. It might be what I like the least about them.

― Frederik B, Saturday, May 16, 2026

Ida's a freeze-dried simulacrum of international film cliches whose time had past.

I can see that Ida tried to invoke the spareness and obliqueness of bygone art films, but I didn't feel put off by that when I saw it 12 years ago. I will watch it again. The most memorable things about it to me all these years later are the silences and the sense of withholding, the dichotomy of innocence and cynicism, and especially the starkness of the black-and-white cinematography, keeping the action quite low in the frame and highlighting the blankness above.

It also touches on the awfulness of Poland in the 1940s when it suffered genocidal campaigns waged by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union targeting both the Jewish population and the intelligentsia

I guess I'm the only one posting here.

Paper Tiger by James Gray, Moulin by László Nemes, and Garance by Jeanne Herry are coming tomorrow.

Early reviews of Paper Tiger are already trickling in after it had its first screening at 9:50 pm tonight in Cannes. Bilge Ebiri describes it as a future NYC classic. David Ehrlich at Indiewire gave it his first “A” of the festival, and describes it as a film that forcefully tugs at the ties that bind families together and observes how self-inflicted wounds can suffocate them and tear them apart.

Armageddon Time is one of the decade's best films.

Keep the posts coming Dan! I don't have much to add but I'm enjoying reading them.

Me too. Seeing some real vitriol against Paper Tiger amid the praise. So don't think it's going to win big.

I can't sleep so yeah I'm collating negative takes on Paper Tiger into a composite image and uploading them here

https://i.postimg.cc/brmtwZ9Y/B28F80BD-B382-493D-AA4B-F7983FEAF5A2-COLLAGE.jpg

While I'm in naysayer territory, I'm following Cannes as usual with The Last Thing I Saw podcast and Jonathan Romney was on that, unconvinced by All of a Sudden, having been a fan of Hamaguchi's Let work.

After The Diary of a Chambermaid, another literary adaptation in the Director's Fortnight is also getting lots of love: Clarissa from the Esiri brothers puts Mrs Dalloway in Lagos.

Ida's a freeze-dried simulacrum of international film cliches whose time had past.

― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), 17. maj 2026 00:52 (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean, yes, but what if he did the same thing two more times? Then he would be an auteur!

La Libertad is awesome, as is basically everything Lisandro Alonso has done. I loved his last two much more expansive films, but very excited he didn't take 9 years to make a film this time.

Clarissa sounds good to me too, Alba

I don’t know much about James Gray. I’ve only so far seen The Lost City of Z and Armageddon Time, both of which I liked. Fremaux seems to really like him. This is his sixth time in competition, but he has won absolutely nothing so far.

Na Hong-jin’s Hope sounds like it is a potentially great film marred by cringy CGI. It was billed ahead of time as the festival's star film. Variety’s headline: “Na Hong-jin’s Overlong Creature Feature is a Guns-Blazing Riot of Bawdy Humor, Bad CGI and Brilliant Action”. This is his first time in competition. The description of it reminds me a little of The Host

László Nemes’s Moulin is yet another film that has gotten initial mixed reviews. If any of you have not yet seen his debut film Son of Saul (2015), it is very chaotic but is pretty memorable. It won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Grand Prix. This is his second film in competition

Finally - Cannes first-timer Jeanne Herry’s Garance (Another Day): Adèle Exarchopoulos plays an actor suffering from alcohol addiction and trying to recover. Like with her Blue Is the Warmest Color co-star Léa Seydoux in Gentle Monster, this sounds like a middling film with a good central performance.

Na Hong-jin’s Hope sounds like it is a potentially great film marred by cringy CGI.

Loved "The Wailing," saw the trailer for this and ... dunno.

I loved The Wailing too. What a strange film that was

Tomorrow we get l'Inconnue (The Unknown) by Arthur Harari, a writer who is venturing into being a director. It is a tale of an introverted photographer who becomes fixated on a mysterious woman and awakens to find he has inhabited her body. It sounds wild. He was previously in Un Certain Regard with Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle (2021) and won an Academy Award for writing Anatomy of a Fall with his partner Justine Triet, the director of that film

Also Fjord by Cristian Mungiu, about an immigrant family living in Norway. Mungiu has made three of my favorite films - 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), Graduation (2016), and R.M.N. (2022). He's already won the Palme d'Or for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Best Director for Graduation, as well as Screenplay for Beyond the Hills (2012) which I have not yet seen but which is now on the Criterion Channel.

Cool. Count me amongst those quietly reading along. As someone who religiously avoids trailers and largely saves reviews till afterwards, this level of detail is actually ideal.

Beyond the Hills is good if a little overwrought, I need to catch up on Mungui's output as I've only seen that and 4M3W2D (as it probably isn't known). l'Inconnue sounds great! Probably not as great as Tod Browning's The Unknown but what is?

I loved Jordan Ruimy's comments about Hope:

"In a competition lineup full of quiet suffering and highly restrained films, this thing crashes through the doors like a maniac."

"There’s something refreshing about watching a director go this completely overboard. So many Cannes films this year have felt emotionally muted, carefully controlled, almost afraid to get ugly. Hope is ugly. It’s sloppy. It’s soaked in blood and rain and screaming and creature goo. It throws absolutely everything at the wall. The action is relentless."

"Honestly, I’m still not entirely sure what just happened tonight. It felt like a first for Cannes — this gigantic, blood-soaked sci-fi monster action movie somehow competing for the Palme d’Or. The reaction leaving the Palais was a mixture of confusion, laughter, irritation, and genuine awe — which, frankly, feels like the ideal response to a movie this unhinged. Even when it doesn’t work, it’s alive in a way most films here simply aren’t. And if this really is only Part One, then God help us all."

It sounds awesome

Someone on Twitter said it's "for people who miss Michael Bay’s Transformers movies (me)."

Yuck

James Gray is the best living American director imo

I really like him, but nah. Sean Baker, I think.

László Nemes’s Moulin is yet another film that has gotten initial mixed reviews. If any of you have not yet seen his debut film Son of Saul (2015), it is very chaotic but is pretty memorable. It won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Grand Prix. This is his second film in competition

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/may/18/antisemitism-west-son-of-saul-laszlo-nemes-orphan-moulin

One to avoid.

He’s referring to those artists and film-makers who call for a boycott of Israel. “I think it’s all anti-humanist regression. And because it’s not identified as this, I think it’s very effective at spreading. And one of its very potent vectors has been antisemitism … The Jew has always been [cast as] the sort of internal enemy, and I think now [the idea of] the Jew as the internal enemy of the west has reached the dimensions of European antisemitism before the takeover by the National Socialist Nazi party.”

Bidding war for Jordan Firstman's Club Kid ends with A24 taking it. The one film so far that no one seems to have a bad word say about.

I really like him, but nah. Sean Baker, I think.

― Frederik B, Monday, May 18, 2026 6:11 AM

Now that is a choice worthy of this fine thread.

Mostly glowing reviews for Cristian Mungiu's Fjord, most of which seem to invoke Anatomy of a Fall.

not in the Guardian! They gave it two stars I think

Ah yes. I'm most excited to hear the reaction to Minotaur.

they seemed to like both Fatherland and The Beloved

Marine Atlan is is a french cinematographer who has directed her first feature-length film, La Gradiva. It about a troupe of high school kids who travel to the Pompeii ruins. It is in Critics’ Week and has gotten some great reviews.

Mark Asch:

Fjord (Cristian Mungiu): ]A Different Man's Sebastian Stan & Renate Reinsve reunite as true believers whose children, like Job's, are taken away (by Norway's Child Protective Services). Some Anatomy of a Fall forensic ambiguity but mostly an overdue excoriation of the Nordic welfare state's smug enlightened xenophobia.

Also: l'Inconnue The Unknown: Force-femme bodyswap procedural is too fugue-like to be Brian De Palma’s It Follows but in pitting appearances against memory it’s still risky & resonant in disassociation, dysmorphia/dysphoria, & the palimpsestic nature of identity.

an alternative review of that by Cody at Cannes, whoever he is:

“Arthur Harari is lucky Léa Seydoux is so expressive in l'Inconnue (The Unknown) aka Staring Contest: The Movie, because so much of this slog is just her staring at nothing. Given the concept, the way it shockingly avoids any outright discussions of gender is almost troubling.”

At this point who knows what to believe. That’s what I love about Cannes

Never mind critical consensus, how can reports not even settle on how long a standing ovation was?

Nicolas Winding Refn's 'Her Private Hell' Slays Cannes Crowd With 7-Minute Ovation

Nicolas Winding Refn's 'Her Private Hell' Heats Up Cannes With 12-Minute Standing Ovation

LOL!

I was lucky enough to catch both The Chaser and The Yellow Sea in theatres, that Na feller has my vote

Abel Ferrara and Arthur Harari singing Bob Dylan's "The Man in Me" at the l'Inconnu party.

Google news alerts felt I needed to know that Mungiu's Fjord received a 12 minute standing ovation, allegedly the longest so far. I also see estimates of 10 minutes for Gray and 11 minutes for Hamaguchi. #OvationWatch

Who knew there was a Wikipedia page lol? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cannes_Film_Festival_records#Longest_standing_ovations

Lower estimates over there but it seems the Jane Schoenbrun film was also a, um, high achiever by this kerrazy metric.

The ovation thing is so dumm

From what I can ascertain, the French critics don't rate Fatherland but the Chinese ones love it. The Chinese, meanwhile, are the naysayers when it comes to Minotaur.

The Chinese critics grid I was looking at

https://i.postimg.cc/6pcmHH5R/IMG-2336.jpg

Specifically the Cahiers critics in fact

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1o7IVqGHUTDRSStbe6OQ7E4Xs4xqaWBtQ3VhC_xLio_4/edit?usp=sharing

A review of Fatherland.

Just looked it up and all seven of Pawel Pawlikowski's features have been under 90 minutes. We love to see it!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s film Minotaur is supposed to be a remake of Claude Chabrol’s The Unfaithful Wife (1969) (a film I haven’t seen), but with his usual cold geopolitical subtext. It’s gotten seriously good reviews, and seems like another contender for the Palme.

This is his fifth time at Cannes and fourth time in competition. He was first nominated for The Banishment (2007). He won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize in 2011 with Elena. He was again in competition with Leviathan (2014), which won Screenplay, and Loveless (2017), which won the Jury Prize. Those two films are both monumental

I thought Leviathan was amazing

To the ancient Greeks, the minotaur (with the body of a man and the head of a bull) represented the ultimate symbol of the monstrous and the savage. There is a very long, convoluted tale about the story of Minos and the minotaur in Greek mythology, involving Pasiphaë and Daedalus. I don’t know how it relates to this film.

Marine Atlan's La Gradiva won the Critics' Week Prize!

From what I understand, the minotaur demands sacrifices and the film touches on that aspect.. but haven't seen it obv

Ira Sachs' The Man I Love in competition is a musical starring Rami Malek. It is about AIDS in the late 80s, which is an era I lived through as a gay man in the Castro in SF. That experience was painful and was dominated by loss and grief, and I hope this film doesn't trivialize it in any way.

It has gotten good reviews. I'm hopeful but also skeptical

Mark Asch:

"BITTER CHRISTMAS: A white-haired Prada-clad gay-eminence filmmaker who mines his friends' trauma for his next screenplay, about a filmmaker who mines her friends' trauma... Nesting, insular stories about filmmaking, clearly written chronologically — Almodóvar is in his Hong Sang-soo Era"

Expect three more films this year then

Today we also get A Man of His Time by Emmanuel Marre, which sounds overlong and boring.

Tomorrow the 21st and also then the 22nd, finally, we get The Black Ball (La Bola Negra) by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, as well as Coward by Lukas Dhont (one of my favorite directors), The Dreamed Adventure by Valseska Grisebach, and finally Histories de la Nuit (The Birthday Party) by Lea Mysius

I'm kind of expecting all these films to be afterthoughts in the festival, but they sound interesting, so who knows

I can see that Ida tried to invoke the spareness and obliqueness of bygone art films, but I didn't feel put off by that when I saw it 12 years ago. I will watch it again. The most memorable things about it to me all these years later are the silences and the sense of withholding, the dichotomy of innocence and cynicism, and especially the starkness of the black-and-white cinematography, keeping the action quite low in the frame and highlighting the blankness above.

I haven't seen either film since they were in theaters, so my memory of them isn't that fresh, but I thought it was meant to invoke that era - not for dubious reasons either and not the only thing that came across in its aesthetic. I was initially skeptical before seeing either film, but it sunk in how alien these films looked despite evoking a familiar time and place. (Someone else who felt the same way compared it to Borges’ Pierre Menard and his rewrite of Don Quixote - textually identical to but contextually wholly different from Cervantes’ original.)

But it's more than just the overall look, all of Pawlikowski shots are so rich and meticulously composed, the visual power of each one is self-contained - it rarely comes from the way any particular shot is played off another one. IIRC with Cold War, as soon as one shot began, the composition usually held until the next one, so even when people are moving (or even dancing) through the frame, the aesthetic evoked still photography.

And as you observed, with both films there are moments where Pawlikowski is framing his characters at the bottom of the screen (sometimes in the bottom third), using a flattened composition that fills the space above them with a dense amount of detail, or in a few cases, virtually a complete absence of detail. In these shots, the characters always face the camera, as if their backs are to everything else - there's one shot I do remember well where he places a pair in front of a large mirror, and for a moment you get the illusion that what they're seeing is happening behind them. It's a striking effect that isolates his characters while burdening their figures with the world around them, and that was a recurring feeling throughout Cold War, the feeling of claustrophobia at odds with their unending desire to be free.

I also remember the soundtrack being impressive, running the gamut between Polish folk, jazz, pop and even early rock & roll, and yet none of it ever felt forced, jarring or thrown together, it all felt very organic and all of apiece to the film.

(should be evoke, not invoke: "meant to evoke that era")

*how alien these films looked now in the present day

Voted for Grisebach, though we haven't seen it yet. She's just so good, and the title reminds me of Schanelecs 'The Dreamed Path', so I'm counting on pure Berlin School abstraction.

I made a point of voting before the festival started, and I definitely lost (Gentle Monster)

Heh also voted for the Grisebach sight unseen, Western def one of my 'best films of the 21st century'.

Excited too for the Zvyagintsev.

I could see Gentle Monster taking it too. Or perhaps a Grand Prix. Kreutzer has her fans, and it does sound like a powerful film.

I have no idea who will win, though. My best guess is Pawlokowski or Zvyagintsev, two directors I don't hate but also don't really love. It seems to have been a pretty boring year.

I think you may have been right with your pre-festival scepticism. Nothing seems to have quite caught fire. I think All of a Sudden will win the Palme.

Oh yeah, that's a good bet too. I might even root for that, if Grisebach doesn't catch on.

Alonso or Jude or Schoenbrun would have been good in competition. Even Winding Refn seems to have hit the audience better than expected. They're just bad at programming the competition, and I don't think it will improve until Frémaux leaves.

Someone on the Moiree podcast said that even when films in competition weren't French, they usually had that Canal+ sheen to them, often even seeming like were French films in disguise.

I've seen other critics (Jonathan Romney, Alex Billington) suggest that cinema is just in bad way overall, that it's not really meeting the moment of the world we're in.

I wrote at the time that Ida spends 81 minutes showing how a nun gets disillusioned yet is directed as if by a nun.

I think cinema is in a bit of a crisis, but it's not as bad as Cannes has been. They are specifically choosing the well known, the safe, the unexperimental. There's a lot of directors making interesting stuff, but they never get into major competition, never get money to scale up, so it's like, one great film every five years. Nothing comparable to, like, Kiarostami in the 90s or Taiwan New Wave in the eighties.

Wow, here's a (Spanish heavy) grid that has the Marre film leading.

https://i.postimg.cc/SxqL54JK/IMG-2346.jpg

Today we have La Bola Negra and Coward. Four of the last six Palme winners have debuted on 21 May. Seems to be lots of pre-screening hype about La Bola Negra.

I wrote at the time that Ida spends 81 minutes showing how a nun gets disillusioned yet is directed as if by a nun.

I only saw it once, but I wouldn’t say the film was about a nun’s disillusionment. It may have been a crisis in faith story leading to a dark family secret, but she went back on her own terms. When she steps out of the only life she’s known and takes on her aunt’s identity (figuratively speaking), it turns out it’s to experience what she’s never known (or maybe as her aunt said, to know what she’s actually giving up) than rejecting her religion.

Whiplash from all the gushing about La Bola Negra on my timeline being followed by it getting a pasting on the Moirée grid.

En Moirée el inicio no es positivo para La Bola Negra. #Cannes2026 pic.twitter.com/uMK0NY8hDO

— Pablo Martín (@pabmasal) May 21, 2026

I think most of the gushing about the Javis' La Bola Negra on twitter is by Oscar bloggers. I am very interested in it, but it may be a bit overblown. Marres' A Man of His Time (Notre Salut) also seems asymmetrically hyped

Lukas Dhont's Coward is going to get the usual reviews, I'm almost certain. Some big praise but also vituperative, trenchant criticism for being "too heavy handed". I'm voting for it though, because in spite of the hate for his two earlier films, I really like him as a director

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I think I was that vote for Sorogoyen, ages ago, based on nothing much at all. Fear the predictive power of my clueless stab though: I chose Panahi last year lol.

I voted for Hamaguchi today. Don't feel particularly confident about it, though.

I voted for Hamaguchi today. Don't feel particularly confident about it, though.

I love the idea of the Hamaguchi film winning, too. The 3 most respected films by the Cannes critics so far are All of a Sudden, Fatherland, and Minotaur, as Frederik said. I'm just wondering if a jury headed by Park Chan-wook is really going to go for any of those

As we learned in 2018 with Lee Chang-dong's Burning and in 2016 with Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann, the highest score on the jury grids doesn't mean a film will win an award

Dhont et al at 'Coward' #OvationWatch

I was oblivious to "hate for his two earlier films". :(

Oof, the reviews of Her Private Hell...

My predictions:

Palme d'or: All of a Sudden (Soudain)
Grand Prix: The Black Ball (La Bola Negra)
Best Director: Na Hong-jin
Jury Prize: Fatherland
Best Screenplay: The Man I Love
Best Actress: Sandra Hüller
Best Actor: Javier Bardem

Oh whoops, can't have Fatherland twice

Palme d'or: All of a Sudden (Soudain)
Grand Prix: The Black Ball (La Bola Negra)
Best Director: Na Hong-jin
Jury Prize: The Unknown (L'inconnue)
Best Screenplay: The Man I Love
Best Actress: Sandra Hüller
Best Actor: Javier Bardem

I voted Hamaguchi too, because it sounds like people really liked it and also people like Hamaguchi.

I watched a couple of clips from The Black Ball, and it looks beautiful

Jane Schoenbrun's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma won the Queer Palme!

Sandra Wollner's Everytime won the Un Certain Regard Prize. This is her third film

The closing ceremony is tomorrow. It usually starts at 7:15 pm Cannes time, which for me on the US West Coast is mid-morning. I always have trouble finding a stream that's available here to watch it

I like reading the social media posts ahead of time that tell us which film-makers and stars have been invited back

Yes, here we go

https://i.postimg.cc/PxGFVqb2/IMG-2417.jpg

So looks like the Americans lose out.

Favorites of "my film critic friend" (as I used to refer to him on here 20 years ago):

All of a Sudden
The Beloved
The Black Ball
Clarissa
Club Kid
Fjord
Iron Boy
Paper Tiger
The Samurai and the Prisoner
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

https://bsky.app/profile/briantallerico.bsky.social/post/3mmjcillbc222

Interesting posts Alba about those returning for the closing

Best actor shared by

Emmanuel Macchia and Vewlentin Campagne for Coward

Best screenplay

A Man of His Time

kind of wanted to watch this live, but not enough to download tiktok

Best actress shared by

Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto for All of a Sudden

So I guess that's not winning the Palme, then

Jury prize to

The Dreamed Adventure

Best director joint

Javier Calvo & Javier Ambrossi for The Black Ball

and

Paweł Pawlikowski for Fatherland

Looks to me like Minotaur is winning the Palme and Fjord the Grand Prix

Grand Prix goes to …

Minotaur

Ooh, lots of people hated Fjord, so that's an interesting Palme.

Second Palme for Mungiu. I kinda like most his films, I just hated 'Graduation' so much it soured me a bit on everything.

Also, the films sounds a bit 'why are we so quick to judge conservative christians?' to me, which I'm just done with. But I could definitely be wrong about that.

Yes, the critics I heard slating it objected to what they saw as a rightwing attack on liberal societies like Norway, seeing false equivalences in its presentation of those with traditional values as a persecuted minority.

There it is confirmed.

Neon's reign continues!

I've seen three of Mungiu's five previous films and thought they were all excellent. From what limited info I've gathered from Q&A's at the NYFF, the Romanian film community is pretty tight - in addition to any films that are financed by private investors (Radu Jude's probably does well in this regard) I think something like one film a year gets government funding, with free artistic reign because the money is considered "spent" (as it's to foster and promote their culture, not to sell out malls and multiplexes). It sounds like most of the Romanian films that make it to the NYFF fall in this category, and they're roughly drawn from the same pool of talent - the actors in particular are exceptional, and they deliver every time out.

Regardless, given his past work, I'm really skeptical he'd make a film as reductive as "why are we so quick to judge conservative Christians?," especially in light of Beyond the Hills and R.M.N. (both of which are based on real-life incidents). The former is unsparing in showing the horrendous effects of a convent's misguided actions, but it's also clear these are horrific crimes committed by people who wrongfully believed they were acting out of compassion and an abundance of care. When he screened the latter at the NYFF, he made the point that he was more interested in keeping his distance and examining the complexities that cause a community to act and think in tragic ways.

Actually not wrongfully, the women really were motivated by those reasons, but the course of action was definitely wrong.

I was checking out an interview with Mungiu in the Hollywood Reporter and saw this from Mungiu in the transcript:

I think this film is a lot about fundamentalism. If you have a mindset of fundamentalism, it’s not such a big difference between right-wing and left-wing fundamentalism. I think that we should meet somewhere in the middle and start by accepting that some people won’t have the same opinions and values as we have.

Either he is purposely dumbing down his politics for the Hollywood Reporter audience, or his politics are nearly non-existent, in the sense of being founded in thoughtful consideration of facts beyond his personal experience.

That entire response is important, not just the last sentence:

Q: How do you balance tolerance in a liberal democracy with people who fundamentally reject democratic values?

A: This is why I made the film in Norway, not in Belarus. There is no debate in Belarus. I come from a communist country. There was no debate about your right to doubt what was imposed as truth in society.

But I hope there is still room in a democratic society to talk about the values that you are having and the most appropriate way of spreading them around. I have a great respect for Norway and for the Nordic countries. It’s a very civilized society. They need to be less rigid in understanding that not everybody was so fortunate to reach this level of empathy.

You need to be patient a little bit, and you need to find ways of engaging in dialogue. It’s not helpful to say, “Trust me, this is going to be good for you.” You still need to convince people and invest in educating people, not enforcing your set of values, even if you are certain that it’s for their own benefit.

I think this film is a lot about fundamentalism. If you have a mindset of fundamentalism, it’s not such a big difference between right-wing and left-wing fundamentalism. I think that we should meet somewhere in the middle and start by accepting that some people won’t have the same opinions and values as we have.

And this isn't a departure from what he's said in the past. With R.M.N. he made it clear that he was wary of discourse that didn't bring "profound change" but rather trained people to be "more careful in what they say rather than reconsider what they believe," something that would lay the groundwork for "surprising election results."

thanks, birdistheword

I like the Cannes editions that have multiple double winners! Is this the first time that both the Actor and Actress awards have gone to multiple people?

Thanks for the running commentary again, Dan (and others). Minotaur sounds like the one I most want to see, and very intrigued by The Dreamed Adventure.

Based on the stills, the lighting in Minotaur looks amazing (or at least looks like my jam, with natural and practical lights).

lol

Park Chan-wook gets the biggest laugh in #cannes jury press conference: “To be completely honest, I didn't want to award the Palme d'Or to any of the films because it's an award that I myself have never gotten. [LONG PAUSE, LEANS INTO MIC] But I had no other choice.”

— Jada Yuan (@jadabird) May 23, 2026

Is this the first time that both the Actor and Actress awards have gone to multiple people?

― Dan S, 24. maj 2026 01:27 (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

No, in 2006 both went to multiple cast members of Volver and Days of Glory. I don't know if that's the only time.

Ha ha

Jesus Christ. The moronic discourse about FJORD is *already* insufferable. pic.twitter.com/omSPZKKTMN

— 🥃Donald Clarke📽️ (@DonaldClarke63) May 23, 2026

lol well, I guess it was inevitable.

happy for renate

I just finished watching Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling, a film from Germany which won the Cannes Jury Prize last year. It is on Mubi.

It is a great film about 4 generations of women and their families living on a farm for over 110 years in Altmark in East Germany along the border with the West (a rural place only separated from West Germany by a small river). 1910s. 1940s, 1980s, 2020s

The non-sequential story in 4 different time periods is very confusing at first, but gradually makes sense. The film is about the generational trauma that women experience, and about finding agency. A lot of the scenes are blurred or shot through a spyhole. It is filmed in a narrow 1:33/1 aspect ratio. I couldn’t understand it all on my first watch. It seems like there is so much more there

There are moments when the soundtrack is overwhelmed by a low thrum or by a sound of wheat falling from a harvester or of a waterfall, sometimes accompanied by a vinyl runout groove hissing and clicking. Those scenes feel like a portal connecting the four different time periods.

It has a magical ending. This is only her second film. Amazing

Yeah, that was pretty great! Certain scenes really linger in my memory.

I tried to coin a genre-term when I reviewed 'Sound of Falling'. Because so much of the film feels like a dream ('träumen' en German), and because this unreality to a large extent comes from the inability to depict historical trauma, I call it 'träumatic realism'. Han Kang writes träumatic realism too.

Too few Cannes films these days let you think up weird genre-terms, imo.

Cannes films I'm most interested in seeing, in no particular order

I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning
La Gravida
Club Kid
Gabin
Fatherland
Minotaur
Arco
The Unknown
The Dreamed Adventure

Sorry, got muddled trying to remind myself of the name of the animated film I read about. We Are Aliens (Arco was last year).

And Everytime, which won top prize in Un Certain Regard.