Cannes, more than a festival, has always been a thermometer. It measures the temperature of cinema, of course, but also that of the world that produces it, finances it, censors it, celebrates it and, when necessary, uses it as a symbolic battlefield. The 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, scheduled from 12 to 23 May 2026arrives in fact at a time when the glamor of the Croisette almost seems like an exercise in resistance: red carpets, dream dresses and flashes, but in the background wars, geopolitical tensions, industrial crises, the cumbersome return of artificial intelligence and a Hollywood that this year chooses not to send its blockbusters to be judged by the most elegant and ruthless tribunal of world cinema.
The Palme d’Or will be awarded on Saturday May 23 by a jury chaired by the South Korean director Park Chan-wookthe first Korean filmmaker to hold this role in the history of the Festival. A fact that is not just decorative: Cannes thus consecrates, once again, the weight of Korean cinema in the global cultural system, from Old Boy to Decision to Leavepassing through that baroque, cruel and highly refined visual grammar that has made Park one of the most recognizable authors of our time.
The line-up: 22 films in competition and a festival full of masters
I am 22 films in competition for the Palme d’Or 2026. The official selection brings together very important names from international arthouse cinema and new trajectories to be observed carefully. In the race there are, among others, Pedro Almodovar with Amarga Navidad, Asghar Farhadi with Parallel Tales, James Gray with Paper Tiger, Hirokazu Kore-eda with Sheep in the Box, Na Hong-jin with Hope, Cristian Mungiu with Fjord, Léa Mysius with The Birthday Party, Paweł Pawlikowski with Fatherland And Andrey Zvyagintsev with Minotaur.
It is a selection that says a lot even before it is seen: less muscular industry, more authors; less American amusement park, more European and Asian restlessness; less consolation, more fracture. Cannes 2026 seems to want to remind you that cinema is never innocent, especially when it pretends to be.
Here are ten points to read Cannes 2026, in our opinion.
1. Park Chan-wook, president of the jury, brings Korea to the center of the Croisette
The choice of Park Chan-wook to the presidency of the jury is one of the symbolically strongest pieces of news of this edition. The Festival defines him as a viscerally baroque, subversive figure, capable of holding together aesthetics, moral violence, desire and social message. But above all, Cannes recognizes that South Korea has now played a structural role in contemporary cinema: no longer an exception, no longer a “phenomenon”, no longer a passing wave. System.
They sit next to him Demi Moore, Ruth Negga, Laura Wandel, Chloe Zhao, Diego Céspedes, Isaach De Bankole, Paul Laverty And Stellan Skarsgård. An international, transversal, deliberately untamed jury, which will have to choose the film capable of inheriting the 2025 Palma won by Jafar Panahi with It Was Just an Accident.
2. Hollywood stays at home: no big American blockbuster
The great absence of Cannes 2026 is Hollywood at its most spectacular. There is no shortage of American films, because Paper Tiger by James Gray and The Man I Love by Ira Sachs are in competition, but the global red carpet blockbuster is missing, the one that in recent years had brought the loud noise of Top Gun: Maverick, Mission: Impossible or Mad Max: Fury Road.
It is an absence that weighs heavily because Cannes has always lived on this contradiction: on the one hand the most severe auteur cinema, on the other the star system economy in its most dazzling version. In 2026 the center of gravity shifts. Fewer franchises, more authors. Less global promotion, more critical risk. And perhaps even less desire on the part of the studios to expose very expensive products to the immediate verdict of an audience capable of transforming a screening into a coronation or public execution.
3. John Travolta makes his directorial debut and brings the myth back to Cannes
Then there is John Travoltawho arrives at Cannes not simply as a star, but as a debut director. Propeller One-Way Night Coach it is included in the Cannes Première section and is indicated in the official selection as his first film as director.
The operation is perfectly Cannes: a popular icon, a vintage imagery, aviation, the nostalgia of an era in which travel still had a liturgy and not just a boarding pass compressed into the smartphone. Travolta brings with him the myth of Hollywood even in the year in which Hollywood, as an industrial machine, seems to be taking a step backwards.
4. The Russian return passes through Andrey Zvyagintsev
Among the most politically charged titles is Minotaur Of Andrey Zvyagintsevthe Russian director of Leviathan And Lovelessabsent from the feature film since 2017 and now in competition for the Palme d’Or.
His return cannot be read only as a cinematic event. Zvyagintsev is one of the most recognized Russian voices outside his country’s official system, and the title itself, Minotauralready promises a moral labyrinth rather than a simple story. In a festival affected by the cultural consequences of war and the difficulty of separating artist, nation, power and dissent, his presence is one of the most sensitive issues.
5. Kore-eda brings artificial intelligence to the heart of the author
The Japanese Hirokazu Kore-edamaster of wounded families, of subtle affections and of identities constructed through lack, returns to the competition with Sheep in the Box.
The title is already among the most observed because it brings into Cannes one of the central themes of contemporary cinema: technology not as a futuristic accessory, but as an existential question. What remains of the human when the image can be generated, manipulated, replicated? And what remains of the author when the machine enters the space that for a century has been occupied by the hand, by the gaze, by the error?
6. John Lennon returns to the screen, but goes to AI
The other title destined to cause discussion is John Lennon: The Last Interview Of Steven Soderberghincluded among the special screenings. The film works on Lennon’s last interview, recorded a few hours before the assassination on 8 December 1980, and also uses images generated with artificial intelligence.
Here Cannes touches a raw nerve: not AI as toy, but AI as resurrection, archive, ghost. Can a dead person be brought back into an image? Can we do it in the name of memory without slipping into profanation? And above all: who controls the face, the voice, the symbolic body of an artist when technology allows his presence to be artificially reopened?
7. Korea doubles: Na Hong-jin and Yeon Sang-ho
It’s not just Park Chan-wook who marks the Korean strength of this edition. It’s also in competition Na Hong-jin with Hopewhile he appears in the Midnight Screenings Yeon Sang-ho with Gun-che (Colony).
It’s a detail that isn’t a detail. Korea continues to move between auteur cinema, genre, industry and global imagination with a naturalness that many European countries have lost. It no longer asks for legitimacy: it occupies it. Cannes 2026 thus also becomes a snapshot of the new Asian cultural power, where Seoul is not a glamorous suburb but a narrative laboratory.
8. Football enters the temple of cinema
Cannes this year is also about football. It’s in the Cannes Première section The Matchfilm by Juan Cabral and Santiago Franco, while the documentary Cantona brings to the Croisette the magnetic and controversial figure of Eric Cantona.
The point is not just sporting. Football, like cinema, is mass mythology, national tale, collective identity, global business and factory of heroes. Bringing it to Cannes means recognizing that today popular culture no longer lives in watertight compartments: a goal, a face, a shirt or a match can tell the story of the twentieth century as much as a great political novel.
9. Out of competition looks at France, between De Gaulle and contemporary wounds
The Out of Competition confirms the French centrality of this edition. Among the titles there are La Bataille de Gaulle: L’Âge de fer Of Antonin Baudry, Karma Of Guillaume Canet, Diamond Of Andy Garcia, Forsaken Of Vincent Garenq, Growing up Of Agnès Jaoui And Her Private Hell Of Nicolas Winding Refnwhile the opening film is The Electric Kiss by Pierre Salvadori, presented out of competition.
It is a section that brings together national history, thriller, melodrama, political trauma and entertainment. De Gaulle, the violence, the accusation, the memory, the guilt: Cannes remains French precisely when it wants to speak to the world. Not out of provincialism, but because France continues to use cinema as a living archive of its identity.
10. Italy is not there
There are no Italian films in the main competition, and the absence also extends to the main sections of the official selection. It is one of the most bitter facts of Cannes 2026, especially in an edition so strongly dominated by great European and Asian authors.
It is not an eternal condemnation, but it is a signal. Cannes does not reward diplomatic presence, it rewards the strength of films and the ability of a system to produce works that arrive in the right place, at the right time, with a recognizable identity. Italy remains a great country of cinema, but this year watch the Croisette from the outside. And for an industry that loves to portray itself as central, silence weighs almost as much as a whistle in the room.
