As the 79th Cannes Film Festival approaches from May 12 to 23, anticipation is building over which films will grace the Croisette.
Some high-profile titles are expected to skip Cannes in favour of traditional release strategies. Steven Spielberg’s ‘Disclosure Day’, ‘Pixar’s Toy Story 5’ and Lucasfilm’s ‘The Mandalorian & Grogu’ are all likely to pursue conventional blockbusters rollouts, while Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ remains absent, continuing his avoidance of the festival circuit since ‘Memento’ in 2000. Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger and Ruben Östlund’s ‘The Entertainment System Is Down’ are also unlikely to arrive in time, with post-production still underway.
Despite these absences, Cannes 2026 promises a strong auteur line-up. Pedro Almodóvar, Asghar Farhadi, Paweł Pawlikowski, Lukas Dhont and Ryusuke Hamaguchi are all expected to premiere new works.
Pawlikowski’s ‘1949’ revisits Thomas Mann’s life in a black-and-white Cold War setting with Hanns Zischler and Sandra Hüller. Hamaguchi presents ‘All of a Sudden’, his first French-language feature starring Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto, inspired by a real-life correspondence between a philosopher and a medical anthropologist.
Other notable contenders include Lars von Trier’s After, exploring life and death, and Takashi Miike, who could deliver either ‘Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo’ or a Kyoto-set horror starring Charli XCX.
Wildcards like Nathan and David Zellner’s star-studded sci-fi comedy ‘Alpha Gang’ and Valeska Grisebach’s borderland drama ‘The Dreamed Adventure’ are also on the roster.
Festival veterans are also expected to return. Pedro Almodóvar’s ‘Bitter Christmas’ marks a return to Spanish-language cinema, while Werner Herzog’s ‘Bucking Fastard’, Florian Zeller’s ‘Bunker’ and Kantemir Balagov’s English-language debut ‘Butterfly Jam’ all target high-profile slots. Joel Coen’s gothic mystery ‘Jack of Spades’, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s samurai epic ‘Kokurojo: The Samurai and the Prisoner’ and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s political fable ‘Minotaur’ are similarly expected to compete.
Cannes will also likely host a range of inventive and daring projects in sidebars or Un Certain Regard. Quentin Dupieux’s absurdist comedy ‘Full Phil’, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s ‘Sheep in the Box’, Arthur Harari’s gender-bending ‘The Unknown’ and Mike Leigh’s untitled next feature could all provide critical highlights alongside established auteurs.
