- Cannes 2026: “Fjord” wins Palme d’Or (May 24, 2026)
“Fjord,” Cristian Mungiu’s drama about a Romanian family that is targeted by child services in Norway, won the Palme d’Or at the 79th Cannes Film Festival. It was a second Palme for Mungiu, who took the prize in 2007 for “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days.”
The jury president, Park Chan-wook, said he had spent the past two weeks discussing “films by diverse personalities alongside jurors with diverse personalities,” and that “this double layer of diversity” had brought him happiness. “Fjord,” he said, shed light on the issue of “respecting the diversities of the world in an artistically magnificent manner.”
Accepting the award, Mungiu alluded to his past experience winning and his time serving on the Cannes jury under Steven Spielberg in 2013. “All awards are contextual, and the fact that you gave me this award, it’s wonderful for us,” he said. “We feel very happy. But we need to wait 10, 20 years to watch these films again, and then we’ll understand which of them was really good and managed to survive the test of time.”
He added: “Today, the society is split—it’s divided, it’s radicalized. And if you want, this film is a pledge against any kind of fundamentalism.” He made reference to “tolerance, inclusion and empathy”: “These are lovely words, and we’re used to lovely words,” he said, “but we need to apply them more often.”
In the United States, “Fjord” will be the seventh consecutive Palme d’Or winner to be distributed by Neon.
The Grand Prix, or second place, went to “Minotaur,” the director Andrei Zvyagintsev’s transposition of the Claude Chabrol drama “La Femme Infidèle” (1969) to Russia near the start of the country’s invasion of Ukraine. (Latvia stood in for Russian locations.)
The Jury Prize, a third-place award of sorts that often to goes to bold, risk-taking work, went to the German director Valeska Grisebach’s “The Dreamed Adventure,” the story of a Bulgarian archeologist navigating her gangster-run hometown. Grisebach spoke of filming in the region and admiring the empathy and tenderness of its residents.
Best Director was a split between the Spanish directing team Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (“The Black Ball”) and Pawel Pawlikowski for “Fatherland,” a critics’ favorite about the author Thomas Mann’s return to Germany in 1949.
Another critics’ favorite, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden,” took a joint best-actress prize for Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto, who spend much of the film acting in the other’s native language. “Thank you so much for recognizing us as a pair,” Okamoto said. The two actresses appeared overwhelmed and still seemed to be finishing each other’s sentences.
Best Actor was another tie, between Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne, who in Lukas Dhont’s “Coward” play soldiers who begin a love affair while fighting in World War I. It was a festival with many war films: The director Emmanuel Marre won the screenplay prize for “A Man of His Time,” which depicts his great-grandfather, Henri Marre, as a Vichy-era opportunist.
The Camera d’Or, for best first feature, went to Marie Clémentine Dusabejambo for “Ben’Imana,” which dramatizes the complexity of societal and interpersonal reconciliation in Rwanda.
- Cannes 2026 Video #9: Critics Roundtable (May 23, 2026)
The 2026 Cannes Film Festival starts Tuesday, May 12th, running through May 24th. The Ebert team returns this year with coverage of all of the major films in review and video form. In this video dispatch, Managing Editor Brian Tallerico and our correspondents talk about the highs and lows of this year’s fest.
- Cannes 2026: Table of Contents (May 23, 2026)
The 2026 Cannes Film Festival starts Tuesday, May 12th, running through May 24th. The Ebert team returns this year with coverage of all of the major films in review and video form.
Below is a running index of our reviews, dispatches, and video reports from the festival.
Full Reviews
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma review: Slasher fans get the homage they deserve by Brian Tallerico
Propeller One-Way Night Coach review: Travolta’s directorial debut never takes flight by Brian Tallerico
Hope review: Bonkers Korean monster movie destroys the hero narrative by Robert Daniels
Her Private Hell review: Refn is back with shallow trip to the underworld by Brian Tallerico
Fjord review: Thorny moral quandary in this icy drama by Brian Tallerico
The Samurai and the Prisoner review: Riveting 16th century epic plays like Samurai Columbo by Brian Tallerico
Victorian Psycho: More frustrating than fun horror-comedy can’t find a tone by Brian Tallerico
Video Reports
Cannes 2026 Video #1: The 79th Cannes Film Festival Begins!
Cannes 2026 Video #2: A Look Back at Day One of the Fest
Cannes 2026 Video #3: Nagi Notes, Camp Miasma, Werner Herzog
Cannes 2026 Video #4: Festival Dispatch with Zachary Lee
Cannes 2026 Video #5: Festival Dispatch with Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026 Video #6: Club Kid, Paper Tiger, Clarissa
Cannes 2026 Video #7: Festival Dispatch with Jason Gorber
Cannes 2026 Video #8: Dua, I’ll Be Gone in June, La Gravida
Cannes 2026 Video #9: Critics Roundtable
Festival Dispatches
Cannes 2026: The Electric Kiss by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: Fatherland, Parallel Tales by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: Nagi Notes, Ashes by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: Ken Russell’s The Devils, Pan’s Labyrinth, Moonlighting by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: All of a Sudden, Think Good by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: Clarissa, Atonement, Butterfly Jam by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: The Beloved, A Woman’s Life, Gentle Monster by Robert Daniels
Cannes 2026: Paper Tiger, Sheep in the Box by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: John Lennon: The Last Interview, La Libertad Doble by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: The Meltdown, La Frappe, I’ll Be Gone in June by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: Avedon, Visitation by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: Club Kid, Marie Madeleine by Robert Daniels
Cannes 2026: The Unknown, Another Day by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: Iron Boy, Tangles, Lucy Lost by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: Minotaur, Red Rocks by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: The Man I Love, Orange-Flavoured Wedding by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: Dua, Made of Flesh and Fuel, Six Months in a Pink and Blue Building by Robert Daniels
Cannes 2026: The Black Ball, Bitter Christmas by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: A Man of His Time, Moulin, Coward by Robert Daniels
Cannes 2026: I Saw Buildings Fall Like Lightning, Diary of a Chambermaid, La Perra by Robert Daniels
Cannes 2026: Maverick: The Epic Adventures of David Lean, Dernsie: The Amazing Life of Bruce Dern by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: The Birthday Party, When the Night Falls by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: The Dreamed Adventure, Too Many Beasts, Women on Trial, Che Guevara: The Last Companions by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: Everytime, Ben’Imana, Titanic Ocean by Robert Daniels
Cannes 2026: Colony, The End of It, Roma Elastica by Brian Tallerico
- Cannes 2026: Colony, The End of It, Roma Elastica (May 23, 2026)
Midnights have become an unusual program at Cannes, especially as genre titles have broken free from the containment of the late-night program and popped in places like Un Certain Regard (“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma”), Cannes Premieres (“Victorian Psycho”), Out of Competition (“Her Private Hell“), and even Competition (“Hope”). What’s left for the actual Midnight Screenings program? The answer is not much. While Jane Schoenbrun and Na Hong-Jin’s films earned their buzz on the Croisette, there wasn’t much chatter about the actual midnight films, in part because many were seen as disappointing. Zachary Lee will hit three of them here soon, but I have two to anchor this dispatch, and I can’t recommend either.
Yeon Sang-ho’s “Train to Busan” was a bolt of lightning to the genre, a fantastically conceived and executed zombie movie that hummed with the promise of a bold career to follow. The sequel, “Peninsula,” was a bit of a letdown, but featured some great set pieces and reasonably strong ambition. What is there to say really about his 2026 offering, “Colony,” which is already setting the box office on fire in South Korea but only infuriated this genre fan with its aggressively derivative approach and frustrating geography? “Colony” should have been a bloody escape from a Cannes dominated by long chamber pieces, but it was honestly one of the hardest movies to get through this year once I realized it was never going to come together.
Kwon Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun) is a biotechnology professor without a job after a controversial exit. She’s invited to a conference by her ex-husband in the hope it could lead to new employment, but something much more terrifying than a job interview happens. A disgraced scientist named Seo Young-cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan) shows up with a syringe full of deadly stuff, stabbing the head of the biotech company leading the event.
Before you know it, the exec looks like a “Bone Temple” reject, and he starts biting/turning the people around him. It turns out that Young-cheol is not only immune, he can communicate with the hive mind of creatures about to wreak havoc. Sang-ho’s one interesting idea is a zombie hive mind wherein the villains of the piece can communicate and learn from one another, although “The Last of Us” kinda did that first.
There’s a whole ton of “kinda did that first” in “Colony,” including nods to George A. Romero and the entire “Resident Evil” franchise. Not every zombie movie needs to rewrite the manual, but if you’re not going to be original than you need to be well-executed, and Sang-ho can’t keep a consistent choreography to a film set largely in a Korean skyscraper. On the macro level, it’s never clear enough where our survivors are and where they’re going; on a micro level, the action values chaos over coherency. Maybe Sang-ho needed the confined space of a train to really hit his mark. Let’s get him back on board one soon.
Maria Martinez Bayona’s “The End of It” could have been in Midnights, but it’s actually in Cannes Premiere instead, probably because it’s intended more of a conversation starter about aging and mortality than a straightforward sci-fi/horror piece. It’s a film with so many good ideas that go almost nowhere, becoming an increasingly dispiriting exercise in lack of follow-through. This “Black Mirror”-esque riff starts with so much potential, and its undefeated leading lady sustains that promise for longer than lesser performers could have, but just doesn’t ultimately have much to say. A decent performance, strong production design, and sharp ending can’t stop the feeling that this is an idea in search of a movie.
Rebecca Hall plays Clare, who is about to celebrate her 250th birthday in this vision of the future that looks a lot like our own. When she breaks a rib, it’s replaced, and she’s informed that it was her last original bone. The impending birthday, general malaise, and the sense that she’s not really there any more lead Clare to a controversial decision: She’s going to end it. Husband Diego (Gael Garcia Bernal) doesn’t understand and cyborg assistant Sarah (Beanie Feldstein) seems equally confused. 180-year-old daughter Martha (Noomi Rapace) returns to say goodbye, bringing potential android babies for practice given she now hopes that her offspring could take Clare’s spot in the eternal roster—it’s a one out, one in kinda thing. It does lead to the movie’s funniest beat: When Claire throws a synthetic baby that’s annoying her out a window.
Bayona takes a cool, cynical approach to everything that happens in “The End of It,” an aesthetic enhanced by sparse production design. It’s a clinical way to tell this story that puts a window around it that keeps any sort of emotional engagement at bay. What does it mean to die after 250 years? What would it mean for a world of perfect synthetic people to live that long? Does Clare’s decision have an impact on others who have fought mortality?
“The End of It” meanders to an admittedly startling ending, but it steadfastly refuses to truly engage with so many of its ideas. It’s a script that feels like so many beginnings, but too little approaching an end.
Finally, there’s the abrasive, repulsive “Roma Elastica,” director Bertrand Mandico’s hollow provocation about the relative worthlessness of the film industry. Early in the film, Marion Cotillard’s aging actress Eddie hears a story from her assistant Valentina (Noémie Merlant) about a time that she was at a fancy party and took such a massive shit that she couldn’t flush it, forcing her to walk around with it in her purse. While telling this story, Valentina is biting into a chocolate ice cream bar, often in close-up. That’s about as deep as “Roma Elastica” gets, another shock-fest with so little to say that it becomes a chore just to endure.
Eddie has a new job on a cheap sci-fi film in Rome, but she’s distracted by the cancer diagnosis just received at home. “Roma Elastica” rarely aims at emotion or realism. For example, the turd-in-a-purse story is told on a plane in which half the seats are occupied by marble statues. Why? You got me. And when Eddie and Valentina get to Rome, Mandico gets to unleash his inner Fellini, playing with satire that verges into early John Waters gross-out territory, although that makes it sound more fun than it actually is.
Franco Nero pops in for an admittedly great cameo, saying things about how aging stars can only stay young by making movies, and maybe that’s the point of it all? Mandico just wants to be silly, and he convinced two multi-talented actresses to play with him on a deliberately ridiculous project.
“Roma Elastica” is more a series of short films tied loosely together by the film production narrative. In one, Eddie guest stars on a talk show with cardboard cutouts in the audience and a man in ape mask who spouts vulgarities. In another, a face comes out of the back of her head as “Me and My Shadow” plays on the soundtrack.
Taken individually, these shorts might have been inspired standalone experiences. Assembled into a feature, they’re a chore.
- Cannes 2026: The Dreamed Adventure, Too Many Beasts, Women on Trial, Che Guevara: The Last Companions (May 23, 2026)
Valeska Grisebach’s “Western,” shown in Un Certain Regard in 2017, was one of the standouts of that year’s Cannes: an unconventional drama that revolved around the disconnect between German workers building a power plant in rural Bulgaria and the locals. The film put its own spin on the frontier genre—the German and Bulgarian characters don’t speak the same language, so clear communication isn’t a given—while also reflecting on the politics of the European Union.
It’s been nine long years, but Grisebach has been deservedly elevated to competition with “The Dreamed Adventure,” an extreme slow burn (167 minutes) that is also set in Bulgaria, in a border region. At first, the story seems to concern Said (Syuleyman Letifov), who at the outset is shown driving across the border into Turkey. He appears to be playing both sides of a local turf war between gangsters in the drug- and fuel-smuggling business.
Said has a chance run-in with Veska (Yana Radeva), an archeologist he’s worked with before. She’s digging at a site in the border village of Matochina, Bulgaria (one character suggests that archeologists are bigger thieves than the gangsters). Grisebach’s focus shifts to her, especially once Said ominously vanishes. Veska grew up in nearby Svilengrad, Bulgaria, and has a past with Iliya (Stoicho Kostadinov), the reigning gangland kingpin, who is under threat from a newcomer called the Raven.
Exactly where Veska’s allegiances lie becomes an open question for Iliya and for the town. It’s not a question that “The Dreamed Adventure” chooses to answer in a conventional dramatic arc. Rather, the film unfolds as a complex, ever-shifting reflection on memory, regional history, and trust in a lawless context. Veska is kind to Iliya’s young daughter and grows close with a former thief (Velko Frandev).
The seemingly aimless first hour does crucial work in terms of establishing the setting, which the protagonist is at various points forced to traverse on foot instead of by car. (Partly as a goodwill gesture, Iliya orders the potholes by Veska’s excavation site repaired.) “The Dreamed Adventure” is clearly one of the most unusual and considered works in competition, worthy of a second viewing with foreknowledge of where it ends up.
The festival is coming to a close, which means it’s time to write up a few titles that I didn’t fit in anywhere else.
The French filmmaker Bruno Dumont had one of the highlights of Directors’ Fortnight with “Red Rocks,” and Sarah Arnold’s first feature, “Too Many Beasts,” in the same program, feels like a companion piece; its dark but wacky humor bears a similarity to Dumont’s recent, tongue-in-cheek output. The plot concerns a possible serial killer of wild boars and a missing murderer, who may or may not be the same person. The crimes are investigated by a protocol-averse detective (Alexis Manenti) and his workplace therapist (Ella Rumpf, from “Raw”). It’s the sort of comedy that seemed to have French speakers laughing a bit more loudly than everyone else, so it’s possible that some of the humor was lost in translation.
Cannes always presents a handful of films aimed squarely at a French audience, and “Women on Trial” (in Special Screenings) plays very much like the Gallic equivalent of something like the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic “On the Basis of Sex.” Charlotte Gainsbourg stars as Gisèle Halimi, a Tunis-born French lawyer who in 1972 defended a 16-year-old rape victim’s right to have had an abortion, a procedure that was not legalized in France until 1975. The movie, directed by Lauriane Escaffre and Yvo Muller, does a polished, solid-enough job dramatizing a multi-pronged strategy for winning the case, which included attention to optics and the press.
The documentary “Che Guevara: The Last Companions” (in Special Screenings), directed by Christophe Dimitri Réveille, features interviews with associates of Guevara who continued fighting for his cause in Bolivia after he was executed in 1967. The former guerrillas share details from their physically demanding journey through wild areas of the country. One describes escaping soldiers who were tracking them, only to risk returning to retrieve a dog that had been tagging along with the group.
In general, the film comes across as more of a blotter-style account of events than a broader reflection informed by the distance of the years. We learn at the end that at least one of the men interviewed, Benigno (the nom de guerre of Dariel Alarcón Ramírez), became anti-Castro later on. (He also died in 2016—this documentary has been in the works for a long time.) “The Last Companions” is narrated by Vincent Lindon, the festival jury president in 2022, and his participation more than anything else may explain why this dry if historically interesting compendium of talking heads and animated sequences turned up in Cannes.
- Cannes 2026: Na Hong-jin's 'Hope' is the Best AND Worst of Sci-Fi (May 24, 2026)
File this one under "WTF did I just watch?!" One of the most completely bonkers films to ever premiere at the Cannes Film Festival dropped midway through the 2026 edition. Cannes decided to premiere Hope, the latest by acclaimed Korean genre filmmaker Na Hong-jin, his fourth film so far, in the Main Competition at the prestigious festival (where it was competing for the Palme d'Or but it didn't win anything). The issue is that the movie is a full-on, hard sci-fi, totally wacky, extra fun, exceptionally strange, beguiling mess. This evening press screening at the Debussy Theatre at Cannes is one of those nights I'll never forget. An entirely packed house with a completely riled up audience went wild went it started. And then things got weird... By the end there was such a loud mix of booing and cheering it was hard to tell which one was more prominent. One thing is for sure – there is both love and hate for this movie. And it deserves both condemnation and praise. It's the best and worst of modern sci-fi packed into a massive 2 hour & 40 minute epic adventure. I'm stuck somewhere in the middle. The more I think about it, there's no way I can hate it. But I am also just as disappointed as many of my colleagues. It's building up to something spectacular then crashes into a ravine. // Continue Reading ›
- Peculiar Violinist Mystery Thriller Film 'Strung' Trailer w/ Chloe Bailey (May 24, 2026)
"Be careful what you dream..." Peacock has unveiled their trailer for a mystery thriller film titled Strung, which is getting a direct-to-streaming debut on Peacock this summer. This recently premiered at the 2026 American Black Film Festival and will be out to watch online in one month from now. Directed by comedy filmmaker Malcolm D. Lee switching up his genres, Strung stars Chloe Bailey as a talented violinist who takes a prestigious job as a music tutor for the gifted daughter of an influential and enigmatic family. As she becomes entangled in their opulent world, unsettling secrets begin to surface about past links to the family's patriarch, forcing her to question her safety, her dreams, and even her sanity. Starring Chloe Bailey, with Lynn Whitfield, Lucien Laviscount, Anna Diop, Coco Jones, and Romy Woods. This is produced by Jason Blum of Blumhouse, along with Tyler Perry. This kid in the mask concept is pretty wild because they don't explain anything about it in this trailer - just waiting for people to watch the movie and find out. // Continue Reading ›
- Official Trailer for Experimental Doc 'Bouchra' About a Jackal in NYC (May 24, 2026)
"Why all these years we were silent?" Film Movement has revealed an official trailer for an experimental documentary crossed with an animated film titled Bouchra, a meta creation featuring a "queer Moroccan jackal" as the main character. This first premiered at the 2025 Toronto & New York Film Festivals last fall, picking up some good reviews. The pitch: Moroccan filmmaker Bouchra is writing an autobiographical film that reflexively weaves together her own life in New York City with that of her fictional double. Bouchra happens also to be a coyote in a city of anthropomorphic creatures, rendered in nearly photorealistic and hyper-expressive animations. That sounds pretty cool so far. The festival adds: "With a lived-in granularity and unmistakable visual style, Bouchra, the feature debut from acclaimed visual artists Meriem Bennani & Orian Barki is a singular portrait effortlessly towing the line between documentary, visual art and resonant family drama. Deeply felt, surprisingly sexy and formally adventurous, Bennani & Barki's distinctive debut forges new ground." This looks like a very intriguing creation for die-hard cinephiles to dig into. A bit too experimental for my tastes, retelling her own story of how hard it is to create art while being an immigrant. // Continue Reading ›
- Cannes 2026 Awards: Mungiu Wins His Second Palme d'Or for 'Fjord' (May 23, 2026)
Winners of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival awards, including the coveted Palme d'Or, were revealed at a glamorous ceremony in Cannes, France this weekend. The awards this year were again entirely surprising and a bit strange, with many films both loved and hated winning awards and the jury picking a few that no one thought would get much. The top prize Palme d'Or went to Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu and his latest film titled Fjord set in Norway. This is actually Mungiu's second Palme d'Or in Cannes history - he won once before for his abortion film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days in 2007 (19 years ago). This win has caused quite a stir among critics - many love the film, while many others dislike it, and there's a big debate about what it means + what Mungiu is saying (and if that's good or bad). Other major winners include the Russian film Minotaur getting the Grand Prix second place (instead of the Palme), Lukas Dhont's Coward getting Best Actor for both of its lead actors, and Hamaguchi's All of a Sudden getting Best Actress for both of its lead actresses (who are both phenomenal in this film). Whether or not the winners are what you would pick if you were on the jury, these wins are causing quite the commotion and hopefully this will bring more attention to international cinema. A fascinating mix of my top films and some of my least favorites winning. // Continue Reading ›
- Cannes 2026: 'Fatherland' is a Mirror to Our Own Morally Bankrupt Era (May 22, 2026)
After a 7-year hiatus, Paweł Pawlikowski — one of the most prominent Polish filmmakers working today — returns to the Cannes Film Festival with a concise drama that elegantly caps off his unofficial black-and-white trilogy. He began this thematic journey with Ida (2013), a haunting exploration of a young Polish nun unearthing her family's Holocaust tragedy; then continued with Cold War (2018 - also at the Cannes Film Festival), charting a doomed romance across the fractured landscape of post-war Poland. Now, Pawlikowski steps back into the ashes of mid-century Europe with Fatherland, concluding a study of historical trauma with a wonderfully restrained, politically charged narrative. Set in 1949 against the backdrop of the newly partitioned Germany, the film follows Nobel laureate Thomas Mann (played by Hanns Zischler) as he is invited to receive the Goethe Prize: first in American-occupied Frankfurt, then in Soviet-controlled Weimar. Accompanying him as his personal assistant is his daughter, Erika (Sandra Hüller). Having fled the Nazi regime for the US in 1933, the trip marks the author's long-awaited return to his homeland after 16 years. // Continue Reading ›
