The cannes film Festival has unveiled its 2026 program for the 79th edition, and the selection reflects a strong tilt toward auteur cinema. The festival will open with Pierre Salvadori’s La Vénus électrique (The Electric Kiss) on May 12, and the full gathering runs through May 12-23. This edition mixes veteran filmmakers and emerging voices across the competition, the Un Certain Regard sidebar and special sections such as Cannes Premiere and Midnight Screenings. Artistic director Thierry Frémaux and festival president Iris Knobloch framed the program as a space for freedom and cinematic imagination at a time of global uncertainty.
The announced lineups emphasize filmmakers with strong critical profiles rather than a trove of Hollywood studio blockbusters. Still, the roster includes notable names and star-driven projects: Ira Sachs’s Rami Malek vehicle The Man I Love, Cristian Mungiu’s English-language Fjord with Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, and Javier Bardem’s collaboration with Rodrigo Sorogoyen in The Beloved. The festival will also host returns from auteurs including Pedro Almodóvar, Asghar Farhadi, Hirokazu Kore-eda and Andrey Zvyagintsev, underscoring Cannes’s continued focus on auteur-driven premieres.
The competition: films to watch
The main competition line-up contains 21 films representing established names and new challengers. Highlights include Minotaur (Andrey Zvyagintsev), Fatherland (Paweł Pawlikowski) starring Sandra Hüller, Moulin (László Nemes), All of a Sudden (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi), and Sheep in the Box (Hirokazu Kore-eda). Also selected are The Unknown (Arthur Harari), The Dreamed Adventure (Valeska Grisebach), Coward (Lukas Dhont) and Bitter Christmas (Pedro Almodóvar). The program includes 21 competition titles, with five directed by women, a statistic the festival highlighted while presenting the selection.
Auteurs and star-powered entries
Beyond auteurs, the competition features films with widely recognized performers and international casts. Examples include Rami Malek in The Man I Love, Javier Bardem in The Beloved, and the casting draws in Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord. Despite these high-profile names, organizers conceded there is less mainstream Hollywood studio presence than in some previous years; still, the slate aims to spotlight cinematic craft and original voices. The selection process considered more than 2,541 feature submissions from 141 countries, a number the festival cited to illustrate the scope of their programming efforts.
Sidebars, premieres and midnight screenings
The festival’s secondary strands offer adventurous and genre-focused programming. Un Certain Regard — described by programmers as a space for discovery — includes titles such as Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (Jane Schoenbrun), All the Lovers in the Night (Yukiko Sode), and Elephants in the Fog (Abinash Bikram Shah). The Un Certain Regard lineup is intended to highlight distinct perspectives and cinematic risk-taking. Midnight Screenings will host edgier work like Full Phil (Quentin Dupieux), Colony (Yeon Sang-ho) and manifestations of genre play that often become festival cult favorites.
Special screenings, Cannes Premiere and out of competition
Special events and out-of-competition presentations broaden the festival’s public-facing program. Notable inclusions are John Travolta’s directorial debut Propeller One-Way Night Coach in Cannes Premiere, documentary highlights such as Avedon (Ron Howard) and a Steven Soderbergh feature, John Lennon: The Last Interview. Out-of-competition slots list Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell, Andy Garcia’s Diamond and political/historical works including La Bataille de Gaulle: L’âge de Fer. These programs allow filmmakers to present work without competing for the Palme d’Or while still gaining major exposure on the Croisette.
Context, governance and creative debates
The festival framed the selection amid conversations about artistic freedom, technological change and political tensions. Iris Knobloch emphasized Cannes’s role as a platform in troubled times, recalling the festival’s origins as a response to uncertainty. Park Chan-wook will preside as jury president, bringing an acclaimed auteur’s sensibility to award deliberations. Festival leadership also addressed the growing presence of AI in film production, insisting that creation must remain centered on human authorship; Knobloch stated that while AI tools exist, they cannot replicate the emotional core behind a filmmaker’s vision. The 79th Cannes therefore arrives as both a celebration of established cinematic voices and a forum for debates about the future of creative practice.
