2026 Cannes Film Festival Predictions: Un Certain Regard

Introduced in 1978 by Gilles Jacob, the Un Certain Regard sidebar typically presents around twenty films championing distinctive styles and unconventional storytelling. In recent years, the section has increasingly shifted toward spotlighting emerging filmmakers—those still early in their careers, from debut features to relatively new voices. The Cannes Premiere section now lands some of the more established auteurs. Last year’s lineup reflected that focus, with nine of the twenty selections marking feature debuts. Urchin, A Poet, My Father’s Shadow, Homebound and queer titles I Only Rest in the Storm and Pillion were part of the highlights nestled in the Salle Debussy. We expect more of the same from Christian Jeune who’ll be looking to land the top titles being considered in the parallel sections. Monday we looked at possible Critics’ Week offerings, and Tuesday we tried to guess what might populate the Directors’ Fortnight section. Here are our Un Certain Regard predictions:

9 Temples to Heaven
Sompot Chidgasornpongse
Producers: Kick the Machine Films’ Apichatpong Weerasethakul
World Sales: TBD.

In 2002, a future Palme d’Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul introduced his debut feature Blissfully Yours to the Un Certain Regard section offerings and more than two decades later we predict a serendipity type narrative his protégé of sorts is about to finally spread his wings. Working with Thai Joe since 2004’s Tropical Malady, Sompot Chidgasornpongse‘s feature fiction debut is ready. Previously directed Railway Sleepers was a 2016 Berlinale docu selection, and he has slowly been plugging away at 9 Temples to Heaven since 2020. It came to fruition namely after the help of Locarno Film Festival’s Open Doors hub and TorinoFilmLab. Working with themes of generational tension in faith and belief and a family navigating ideological differences, we believe this will secure a Croisette spot launch.

When a fortune teller warns Sakol that his mother may soon die, he plans a one-day pilgrimage to nine temples to save her. Three generations cram into a van – bringing with them simmering tensions, an ailing grandmother, and one Christian girlfriend. As Grandmother’s health falters and tempers boil over, the family must choose between finishing the journey or finally facing the truth.

Arkipelag
Alex Schulman
Producer: Christina Legkova and Sofie Palage
World Sales: TBD.

Recently featured at Göteborg Film Festival’s Works in Progress, from Sweden, we find filmmaker, author, journalist, television and radio personality Alex Schulman‘s feature debut titled Arkipelag (aka Once in the Archipelago). A dramedy featuring Gustaf Skarsgård, Fares Fares and Linus Wahlgren, production took place last year in July with cinematographer Jakob Ihre (from a trio of Joachim Trier’s film) onboard.

When a middle-aged man accompanies his 13-year-old daughter on a school trip in an attempt to repair their relationship, he is soon confronted with conflicts that bring back dark memories from his past.

Amor es el monstruo
Neto Villalobos
Producers: Neto Villalobos, Diego Van Der Laat
World Sales: TBD.

Costa Rican filmmaker Neto Villalobos saw his debut feature All About the Feathers premiere at TIFF, San Sebastian, and Rotterdam. He has been connected to Cannes via his 2018 sophomore feature Helmet Heads which was developed at the Cinéfondation Résidence and returned to TIFF, and just prior to that he was among the directors with a short inside 2017’s Lebanon Factory – a Directors’ Fortnight selection. His latest Amor es el monstruo was presented as part of the WIP works presented at Rotterdam. Paulina García, Natalia Regidor and Liliana Trujillo star. The plot for this new oeuvre sounds gnarly. Villalobos reteams with his cinematographer Nicolás Wong.

A grandmother, whose health is deteriorating, makes a series of mistakes while trying to maintain a bond with her granddaughter, despite her daughter’s mistrust. After several incidents, including the girl’s disappearance during a bingo game, the grandmother is driven to desperation. She decides to kidnap two wealthy children to obtain the money needed to get her granddaughter back. She manages the exchange, but in the end, one of the children dies, leaving her devastated.

Polish filmmaker Aga Woszczyńska broke onto the film scene when Silent Land landed in Platform section at TIFF, but her connections to Cannes goes a decade plus back when her short Fragments was selected for the Directors’ Fortnight in 2014. Filmed in Finland in early 2025, this relationship drama filled with dread and melancholy stars muses Agnieszka Żulewska and Dobromir Dymecki plus Lisa Carlehed, Tomasz Włosok, and Erik Enge. Woszczyńska re-teams with cinematographer Bartosz Świniarski.

Written by Woszczyńska & Łukasz Czapski, Black Water follows the mysterious disappearance of two men amid an ecological disaster on the Åland Islands, their partners begin their own investigation as an oil spill looms offshore. A psychological study of a couple confronting fear, loss, and the illusion of control in an unbalanced world.

Having previously appeared in the section as both an actress and a director, it would be fitting to see Asia Argento return to Un Certain Regard with this dramatic thriller that ufolds in a rather complex political backdrop. Looking at collective despair, betrayal, violent self-destruction, Venezuelan born filmmaker Jorge Thielen Armand frequently probes questions about family, displacement, and identity with a visually alluring aesthetic. His third feature, Death Has No Master follows his debut feature La Soledad which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in 2016 and his sophomore effort La Fortaleza a 2020 Rotterdam selection. Production took place last September under challenging conditions.

This follows a woman who returns to Venezuela to sell her late father’s cacao plantation, only to find it occupied by former workers, unraveling manipulation, long‑buried secrets, and the complex collapse of society set against class divides.

El Puma
Marcela Saïd
Producers: Alejandra García, Wood Producciones’ Andrés Wood, Haut et Court TV’s Carole Scotta, Barbara Letellier, Eliott Khayat and Adrià Monés
World Sales: Protagonist Pictures.

Marcela Saïd began her career in documentary before shifting to narrative filmmaking with The Summer of Flying Fish, which premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. She returned to the Croisette four years later when Los Perros screened in Critics’ Week. Known for exploring themes of class divisions, female subjectivity, and the tensions simmering beneath seemingly placid domestic spaces, the Franco-Chilean filmmaker now ventures into new terrain for her third feature—a proposed dramatic thriller El Puma. Production took place in April of last year with Antonia Zegers, Luis Tosar, Roger Casamajor and Gastón Salgado cast. Saïd re-teams with Los perros cinematographer George Lechaptois.

Written by Saïd and Gonzalo Maza, this is about Ema and Olivier, a Franco-Chilean couple, live on the shores of Lake Pirihueico, in the heart of a nature as fascinating as it is formidable. Since the death of their seven-year-old son, they have led parallel lives: she dedicates herself to collecting lovers, and Olivier to his passion for hunting. This year, their obsession is a puma. They invite Rose and Vince, British friends, to join the hunt. The expedition takes an unexpected turn, and the two couples and their guide, Daniel, must confront their own demons to survive.

Elephants in the Fog
Abinash Bikram Shah
Producers: Underground Talkies Nepal’s Anup Poudel
World Sales: TBD.

Nepalese filmmaker Abinash Bikram Shah first honed his craft as a screenwriter, contributing to Deepak Rauniyar’s Highway (selected for the Berlinale in 2012) and Min Bahadur Bham’s Kalo Pothi: The Black Hen (which premiered in Venice in 2015). He later stepped behind the camera with his 2022 short Lori (Melancholy of My Mother’s Lullabies), which competed for the Palme d’Or short at Cannes and earned a Special Jury Mention. Garnering support from both the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters and Directors Labs in 2023, while landing Berlinale World Cinema Fund, Hubert Bals Fund and Venice Gap-Financing Market support, production on Elephants in the Fog took place in late 2024. At this year’s European Work in Progress at the Filmfest Hamburg’s Industry Days – the project received some finishing funds. This feels like a sure-fire Croisette offering.

Coming from a personal place and based on a true-life incident, this is set in a small Nepalese village nestled in the heart of a forest populated by wild elephants, the film follows Pirati, the matriarch of a community of transgender women. She aspires to a normal life with Master, the man she loves. But when one of her wards disappears, she must choose between love and responsibility to her community.

The First Taste Of Loneliness
Xiaogang Gu
Producers: Shan Zuolong
World Sales: Les Films du Losange

Production on Chinese filmmaker Xiaogang Gu‘s Hangzhou-based drama romance took place last May with Zhou Xun and Xi Meijuan toplining. The First Taste Of Loneliness is the final instalment in the trilogy which began with Cannes Critics’ Wee selected 2019 title Dwelling In The Fuchun Mountains and was followed by 2023’s Dwelling by the West Lake. Looking at grief, and life cycles, Hirokazu Kore-eda cinematographer Ryuto Kondō is onboard here.

A single mother has the idea of restarting her marriage life. During the process of contacting different men around her, she felt confused and did not know where to go. Until the emotions buried in her past memories were awakened, she finally found her own answer.

Les Yeux Verts
Fanny Liatard / Jérémy Trouilh
Producers: June Films’ Naomi Denamur and Julie Billy
World Sales: Kinology

Filmed in May of last year and working with themes of the psychological toll of immigration uncertainty along with sibling love and resilience, Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh moved into their sophomore feature after relative buzz around their 2020 Cannes Label showcased of Gagarine (read review). Featuring Anamaria Vartolomei and Sayyid El Alami topline Les Yeux Verts.

Written by the two filmmakers together with Guillaume Laurant, faced with stress, one refugee child is affected by “the resignation syndrome” and falls in a deep sleep. We follow him in his dreams.

Leila Et La Nuit
Fellipe Barbosa
Production Co.: France’s Damned Films, Brazil’s Migdal Filmes and Morocco’s Lions Production.
World Sales: Lucky Number

Brazilian born Fellipe Barbosa saw his first short Salt Kiss land at Sundance and the fest lassoed him for the Screenwriter’s and Director’s Lab to help develop his feature debut Casa Grande (2014). He would receive some Cannes love when Gabriel and the Mountain premiered in the Critics’ Week section in 2017 and quickly after he co-directed Domingo (2018), which premiered at Venice Days. Featuring Roschdy Zem, Marina Foïs, Françoise Lebrun, Sayyid El Alami, Oulaya Amamra, João Pedro Zappa, and Felipe Frazão, Leila Et La Nuit was filmed in Marrakech in late 2024.

Based on real events involving photographer Leila Alaoui, who suffered severe injuries in a 2016 terrorist attack in Burkina Faso during an Amnesty International assignment on African women’s rights, this is based on the book Off To Ouaga by her father, Aziz Alaoui. The Morocco-set family drama inspired by real events in the life of photographer Leila Alaoui in which a family preparing for a holiday in their Marrakech home learns their daughter has been gravely injured while on an Amnesty International assignment and resolves to bring her home after she is caught in a terrorist attack.

Low Expectations
Eivind Landsvik
Producers: Lotte Sandbu, Synnøve Hørsdal
World Sales: Salaud Morisset

A Norwegian filmmaker that landed on the Croisette with the Palme d’Or short contender Tits in 2023, Eivind Landsvik cast Marie Ulven (aka Girl in Red) in his feature debut titled Low Expectations (aka Lave forventninger). Production took place in May of last year and it received the support of the Norwegian Film Institute and the Danish Film Institute as well as Nordisk Film and TV Fond and Eurimages.

After years of hard work in the studio, touring, and partying, Maja (29) collapses. The acclaimed artist is forced to put everything on hold. Depressed and broke, she has moved back home with her mother and works part-time at a local high school. Maja tries to distance herself from her chaotic past, observing life from the sidelines rather than participating. When her problems catch up with her, Maja is forced to face the harsh reality of everyday life.

La Más Dulce
Laïla Marrakchi
Producers: Juliette Schrameck, Mathieu Verhaeghe, Thomas Verhaeghe
World Sales: TBD.

Casablanca-born filmmaker Laïla Marrakchi debuted her feature debut in the Un Certain Regard section almost two decades back. Since 2005’s Marock, she added a sophomore feature in 2013’s Rock the Casbah (2013) and worked in television namely 2020’s ‘The Eddy.’ Her long await third featured was workshopped at the Marrakech Film Festival’s Atlas Labs both in 2021 and more recently, 2025 where she landed post-production coin late last year. Nisrin Erradi, Hajar Graigaa, Fatima Attif play the lead roles in La Más Dulce, while Marrakchi cast real fruit pickers as supporting players. Souleymane’s Story‘s Tristan Galand is the cinematographer here. Production took place in April of last year.

Written by Marrakchi and Delphine Agut, Hasna (Nisrin Erradi) leaves her native Morocco to work as a seasonal laborer picking strawberries in Huelva, hoping to return and provide a better life for her family thanks to the salary promised by the greenhouse owners. But her dream clashes with a harsh reality: abuse, harassment, and inhumane living conditions. At the risk of losing everything, Hasna and her companions decide to report their situation and begin a fight against their exploiters with the help of Pilar, a Spanish lawyer.

Orient Adagio
Maha Haj
Producers: Tony Copti, Michel Zana
World Sales: TBD.

Palestinian filmmaker Maha Haj will attempt to make it three for three in the section that has been kind to her. She began her cinematic career working as a set designer and art director for the likes of Elia Suleiman, Ziad Doueiri and Rafael Najari and it was with 2016’s Personal Affairs where she knocked on the Un Certain Regard door the first time. She followed that Mediterranean Fever in 2022 and she could be very well be headed back there with Orient Adagio. Kaurismäki’s The Other Side of Hope actor Sherwan Haji toplines. This was recently supported at the 2025 Atlas workshop at the Marrakech Film Festival.

Yazan is a Palestinian filmmaker, born and raised in a Syrian refugee camp. When he gets a residency in Paris to write his first feature, it’s a dream come true at the worst time: he is grieving his grandmother’s death in Aleppo, crushed by self-doubt, and heartbroken. Longing to make his first film, he finds himself emotionally blocked, haunted by trauma and survivor’s guilt. Alone in this beautiful city, pressured to prove himself, he spirals between inspiration and despair. In a desperate attempt to reconnect, he invites fellow international filmmakers from the residency to read his script. What begins as a creative exercise turns into a chaotic, funny, and revealing encounter.

The Painted Bride
Jeremiah Zagar
Producers: Public Record’s Jeremy Yaches, Present Company’s Paul Mezey and Andrew Goldman, Madants’ Klaudia Śmieja-Rostworowska.
World Sales: Charades

After being embraced by Sundance with showcases for his docu debut Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart (2014) and fiction debut We the Animals (2018), Jeremiah Zagar moved onto Netflix charmer Hustle (2022) starring Adam Sandler. Enlisting Jeremy Allen White, Mandy Patinkin and Isabella Rossellini, with The Painted Bride, Zagar proposes a blend live action with an innovative approach to stop-motion animation to tackle themes of grief, creativity and personal collapse.

This stars Allen White as Elisha, a man who during the day swims, cooks and cares for his family, and at night, obsesses over a new project dedicated to his young son and his dying father. When a crisis draws him back home to Baltimore, his world begins to collapse, expand, regress and explode all around him.

The Queen Of Fashion
Alex Marx
Producers: The Hideaway Entertainment’s Matthew Rhodes, Mystic Dawn Media’s Elise Freeman and Marx, The Barnum Picture Company’s Robert Barnum, Mother Sucker’s Andrea Risborough
World Sales: Rocket Science

Working as an actor for about a decade, Alex Marx landed quite the cast for his feature debut which moved into production in June of last year in the United Kingdom. The Queen Of Fashion stars Andrea Riseborough as Isabella Blow (read wiki entry), Dane DeHaan, Emily Beecham, Stacy Martin, Joe Cole, Ncuti Gatwa, Michelle Dockery, Michael Roberts, Miranda Richardson, Sebastian De Souza, Richard E Grant and Fionn O’Shea.

This biopic delves into the extraordinary life of London-born visionary fashion editor, muse, and unstoppable force who shaped the fashion industry, surrounded by a constellation of era-defining artists, designers and creatives.

Shana
Lila Pinell
Producers: Ecce Films’ Emmanuel Chaumet, CG Cinéma’s Charles Gillibert
World Sales: Les Films du Losange

Gathering the likes of Eva Huault, Sékouba Doucouré, and Noémie Lvovsky, Lila Pinell set sail on her solo feature debut in June of last year in Paris. She previously hit the Croisette in the ACID section in 2017 with Kiss and Cry, and when she moved to the short format Pinell won the 2021 Jean Vigo award and then parlayed that into the prestigious Fondation Gan support for Shana. Victor Zébo is the cinematographer here.

Written by Pinell with Catherine Paillé, this revolves around Shana, a woman in her early thirties who is trying to navigate her way between odd jobs to put food on the table, drug deals and an impossible love affair with a toxic thug, Moïse. To make matters worse, her Jewish Moroccan grandmother has just disappeared, bequeathing to her a family heirloom: a ring that protects the wearer from the evil eye. A series of misadventures then befall the young heroine, after which she will, perhaps, finally be able to make peace with herself.

The Station
Sara Ishaq
Producers: Screen Project’s Nadia Eliewat
World Sales: TBD.

It’s been the long game attitude in terms for development for Yemeni-Scottish filmmaker Sara Ishaq‘s directorial debut. The Station began with IFFR Hubert Bals ‘Bright Future’ Development Fund in 2018 and after that she passed through the L’Atelier de la Cinéfondation in 2020, and more recently her project was awarded the La Biennale di Venezia Prize 2025 at the Venice Film Festival for Best Film in Post-Production. Lensing took place in June of last year on a project working with themes of resilience, sisterhood, and survival.

As Layal runs a women-only fuel station in a segregated war-torn town, she is faced with her 12-year-old brother’s growing desire to break free and become a ‘man’. When Layal’s estranged sister unexpectedly shows up with a proposition for their brother, the siblings’ relationship is put to the test.

Trinity
Boo Junfeng
Producers: TBD.
World Sales: TBD.

Singaporean filmmaker Boo Junfeng has shored up on the Croisette in the past with Critics’ Week selected Sandcastle in 2010, and the Un Certain Regard presented Apprentice in 2016. He could make it three for three with the Taiwan-set, Mandarin-language drama Trinity. Leon Dai, Yeo Yann Yann, Tseng Jing-Hua and Will Or make up the cast.

Co-written with Raymond Phathanavirangoon, Johnny, a charismatic evangelical pastor, is known for performing daredevil acrobatics as feats of strength. Despite his staunchly conservative reputation, Johnny becomes infatuated with his disciple Yang. One day, Yang goes missing. Distraught, Johnny investigates the matter, only to find the trails of evidence leading back to those he is closest to.

Un détour
Ann Sirot / Raphaël Balboni
Producers: Les Films du Fleuve’s Delphine Tomson.
World Sales: Pyramide

They introduced cinephiles to their brand of melancholy comedy with 2020’s Madly in Life, and then 2023’s The (Ex)perience of Love – a Cannes Critics’ Week premiere. Working in the dramedy parameters, for their third feature, the tandem of Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni re-teamed with actress Ninon Borsei for a September production. Themes here include intergenerational trauma and memory with female agency and revenge.

Diane desires men as much as she despises them. When she learns that her mother was raped in her youth, the shock is muffled. It’s a surprise—and yet, it explains everything. Diane has only one thing on her mind: avenging her mother. But her mother has only one thing on her mind: finally becoming the woman she should have been. Between the one who wants to remember and the one who wants to forget, everything tightens.

Vagabonds
Amartei Armar
Producers: A.K.A Entertainment’s Yemoh Ike
World Sales: TBD.

With a handful of shorts (including 2022 Palme d”or competition item Tsutsue), Ghanaian-US filmmaker Amartei Armar recast younglings Dorothy Adobea Tandon and Idrissu Tontie Jr. for a debut feature inspired by 2019 short of the same name. Vagabonds (a recent project found at the 2025 Atlas Workshops in Marrakech) began filming in his home country back in May 2024.

This tells the story of orphaned cousins Owusu and Adobea, who embark on a road trip to Accra where Owusu’s birth mother lives. There, they are adopted by a group of street kids who teach them how to survive.

La vie d’une femme
Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet
Producers: Les Films Pelléas’ David Thion
World Sales: Be For Film

La vie d’une femme (aka A Woman’s Life) is one of those films that could potentially be programmed as a showcase at the Critics’ Week or climb the red carpet steps for the Palme d’Or. Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet highly anticipated sophomore feature is loaded with Léa Drucker, Mélanie Thierry, and Charles Berling, Laurent Capelluto and veteran actress Marie-Christine Barrault. With a pair of showcases at the Cannes’ Critics Week in 2018 short Pauline Enslaved and feature debut Anaïs in Love. This new film is coined as a richly layered portrait of a woman in her fifties with an actress (Léa Drucker) who keeps delivering the goods. Production took place in March in France (and possibly Japan) with Bourgeois-Tacquet re-teaming with cinematographer Noé Bach.

She has no children. She is head of a surgical department in Paris. She loves her husband. She is growing tired of her lover. Her mother’s Alzheimer’s is worsening. The public hospital is collapsing. Her dearest friend is faltering. The novelist who came to observe her work for a book is taking up more and more space in her life. Nothing is easy, but Gabrielle isn’t one to give up easily. Gabrielle has decided to be happy.

Vorwärts, Rückwärts, Seitwärts, Stopp
Lisa Weber
Producers: Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion GmbHProducer’s Ulrich Seidl
World Sales: TBD

After a pair of docus in 2014’s Steadiness (a Rotterdam selection) and 2020’s Berlinale preemed Running on Empty, Austrian filmmaker Lisa Weber moved into fiction. Production on Vorwärts, Rückwärts, Seitwärts, Stopp took place in March of last year in her native country plus Italy. The film is coined as the silent erosion of feelings and the attempts to fill the void within.

Nadine’s life is good, or at least it should be: she has an apartment, a partner, and a dog. She works in her mother’s manicure and pedicure studio; her mother is more of a friend than a boss. Yet, a doubt stirs within her. The doubt of whether this can truly be all there is. A film about the silent erosion of feelings and what one does to fill the inner emptiness.

Wolves
Rami Kodeih
Producers: RT Features’ Rodrigo Teixeira
World Sales: TBD

They say write what you know, and the Lebanese filmmaker dives headfirst into the economic crisis that has battered his homeland, transforming lived turmoil into what we imagine might be cinematic fuel. Having cut his teeth on short film cinema for two decades now (this includes 2017’s Lebanon Factory in the Directors’ Fortnight section), production on Rami Kodeih‘s Wolves took place in June of last year and it was recently among the projects in post presented at the Atlas Labs at the Marrakech Film Festival.

During Lebanon’s corruption-induced bank crisis, depositors are denied access to their own savings, two women hatch a daring, elaborate all-night heist to get their money back and pay for a life-saving surgery. As they recruit an ex-militia fighter and truck driver into their plan, the danger escalates, forcing the women to confront the true cost of survival, justice, and sisterhood in a city on the brink.