Cannes 2026: 13 films we are looking forward to

One of contemporary cinema’s most perceptive chroniclers of the human condition, Cannes darling Ryusuke Hamaguchi returns to the Croisette with his latest feature, following the director of a nursing home (Virginie Efira), whose carefully ordered life is upended by an encounter with a terminally ill playwright (Tao Okamoto). Given his strong track record on the festival circuit, don’t be surprised if this one emerges as a major Palme contender. (Luke Georgiades)

We don’t know much about Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell—billed as a revenge flick with “lots of glitter, sex, drugs and violence.” It’s been a decade since Refn last premiered a film in competition (The Neon Demon in 2016) so there’s a growing sense of anticipation around what he’s been cooking up during his time away from the spotlight. (Luke Georgiades)

Following in the footsteps of Steven Spielberg’s Artificial Intelligence and Kogonada’s After Yang, Japanese master Hirokazu Koreeda brings his own distinctive, quietly powerful sensibility to the familiar tale of the child android. A domestic drama (classic Koreeda territory), the film centres on a grieving couple who adopt an infant humanoid in the wake of their young son’s death. (Luke Georgiades)

Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s previous film, the breezy sapphic romance Anäis In Love, quietly emerged as a gem of 2021, so it’s a thrill to see her latest feature vying for the Palme. Not unlike Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden, A Woman’s Life hints at another poignant exploration of female friendship, following surgeon Gabriette (Léa Drucker) whose existence is given new meaning by the novelist (Mélanie Thierry) shadowing her for an upcoming book. (Luke Georgiades)

The horror heads out there will be well aware of South-Korean director Na Hong-jin, whose 2010 film The Wailing remains one of the most haunting features of the last decade. His latest—starring Squid Game’s Hoyeon and Bones and All’s Taylor Russell—sees Na take a hard turn into sci-fi, delivering a chilling mystery set in a remote village on the edge of Korea’s Demilitarized Zone. (Luke Georgiades)

Don’t be put off by the mouthful of a title, Jane Schoenbrun’s third feature film—playing in the Un Certain Regard category—is set to be one hell of a wild ride. The meta plot sees Hannah Einbinder as a queer director who, tasked with remaking an old slasher franchise, gets into a psychosexual quest with its “final girl” who is played by Gillian Anderson. (Kitty Grady) 

No filmmaker has left me aesthetically swooning as much as Paweł Pawlikowski. The Polish director behind astringently sexy titles such as Cold War and Ida is back at Cannes this year with Fatherland. Playing in competition and starring Hans Zischler and Sandra Hüller in the lead roles, it imagines a journey Thomas Mann took with his daughter Erika from West to East Germany. (KG)

Lukas Dhont broke our hearts with Close (2022), his tragic coming-of-age film about boyhood friends which premiered in competition at Cannes in 2022. Dhont will be back at the Grand Théâtre Lumière with Coward, which tells the story of Pierre, a young Belgian soldier in the trenches during WW1 and hints at similar themes of queerness and belonging that Dhont masters so perfectly elsewhere. (KG)

I interviewed Isabelle Huppert as she was preparing to take on this role with Iranian filmmaker Asgar Farhadi in his second French-language film, so it’s exciting to see it come to light. A loose remake of Polish auteur Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog also starring Vincent Cassel, Catherine Deneuve and Virginie Efira, it tells the story of a young man who becomes obsessively infatuated with an older woman. (KG)

Adèle Exarchoupoulos playing the lead role is enough to get us excited for Garance, the fourth feature film from French director Jeanne Harry. Playing in competition, it follows the eponymous Garance experiencing a classic ‘woman-on-the-edge’ narrative: a struggling actress in her 30s with a propensity for parties and unstable relationships, who, battling with alcohol addiction, sees her life spiral out of control. (KG)

Ira Sachs is on a certifiable roll right now, having followed up burner indie 2023 hit Passages with the equally adored Peter Hujar’s Day last year. His next outing seems him shifting gears (genre-speaking) with The Man I Love, a musical fantasy film about an artist navigating illness in late 1980s New York. Its intriguing cast includes Rami Malek, Tom Sturridge, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Rebecca Hall. (KG)

After premiering The Room Next Door at Venice Film Festival in 2024, Almodóvar is back on the Croisette this year with Bitter Christmas. With an entirely Spanish cast it also sees Almodóvar returning to his roots with this story about advertising director Elsa whose mother dies during the Christmas period. Told with the Spanish auteur’s signature primary coloured palette, we can’t wait to be mind-boggled by its autofictional elements. (KG)

Minotaur is the anticipated next title from Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev, whose previous outings have included Leviathan (2014) and The Return (2003) which won the Golden Lion at Venice. Already picked up by MUBI, the premise is pretty juicy: a political thriller follows a Russian business exec who, just as he is about to sack his employees, discovers his wife is having an affair.