2026 Cannes Film Festival Predictions: Palme d’Or – Part 1

In less than two weeks, Thierry Frémaux will unveil the (never 100% complete but always tantalizingly close) lineup for the 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Sure, the trades have intel, but there’s plenty of speculation too—titles long thought ready might still be absent, films everyone assumed were shoe-ins could have quietly accepted an offer from Alberto Barbera, and then there are the real puzzle pieces: “Wait, this got selected?” or “I didn’t even know this existed!” and “I guess Terrence Malick is still editing – sigh”. Normally the total number of selections will situate around 19 to 21 feature mark and as of late we can officially cross the name of Ruben Östlund off from this year’s bingo card. His quest for a 3-peat will have to wait for 2027.

Before we launch into our predictions (we rounded up about two dozen titles) we’ll tidy up here and mention some projects that we believe might be snubbed, wait their turn for the Lido this year, or the Croisette next year but one thing we’ll be prophesying is that 2026 will be a record breaking in terms of gender equality is that there’ll be more female filmmakers in the main Competition than back in 2023 when the total was seven.

Before we launch into our predictions (we’ve rounded up 26 titles in all) — let’s first tidy up by mentioning a few projects we suspect might be snubbed this year, held back for the Lido, or perhaps saved for the Croisette in 2027. One thing we’re ready to prophesy, however, is that 2026 could prove record-breaking in terms of gender parity, with the main Competition potentially surpassing the seven female filmmakers selected in 2023. The biggest ticket item that we have trouble figuring out is Paweł Pawlikowski’s 1949 – a Mubi title. Filming was completed in mid December on the crisp b&w film, but is four months of post enough for this Cold War road trip drama? A soldier struggles with cowardice and heroism in WWI trenches in Lukas Dhont’s Coward. Production took place in the September-October window but regardless of scope we imagine the Belgian filmmaker will not rush post. Argentinian filmmakers Benjamín Naishtat and Lisandro Alonso have highly anticipated films coming along the way with Glaxo and La Libertad Doble but we question where they might be in post. The same applies to Hlynur Pálmason’s On Land and Sea, Kaouther Ben Hania’s You Shall Not Make an Image, Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love, Laszlo Nemes’ Moulin, Felix Van Groeningen’s Let Love In, Andrew Haigh’s The Long Winter and Joel Coen’s Jack of Spades all films were more or less autumn starts and they’ll have had to double down the effort to be Cannes-ready. Two projects we haven’t figured out are Anton Corbijn’s Switzerland and Mike Leigh’s just completed London set project. Here are oure Palme d’Or competition bets:

All of the Sudden
Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Producers: Renan Artukmaç, Bettina Brokemper, Julien Deris, David Gauquié, Hiroko Matsuda, Jean-Luc Ormières, Kôsuke Oshida, Joseph Rouschop and Yûji Sadai
NEON

Despite presenting his last film Evil Does Not Exist at the Venice Film Festival, we expect a return to the Croisette for Ryusuke Hamaguchi especially since its grounded in France. After presenting 2018’s Asako I & II and 2021’s Drive My Car In in competition, we arrive to the Paris and Kyoto set All of a Sudden. A specialist in themes of communication and miscommunication, chance and fate, plus memory and healing, this stars Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto and will receive domestic releases in Japan and France this summer. This is based on the non-fiction book You and I – The Illness Suddenly Get Worse.

The director of a nursing home in the Parisian suburbs attempts to introduce a humane care technique known as Humanitude, in spite of resistance. Her life is changed when she meets a terminally ill Japanese playwright named Mari Morisaki.

The Birthday Party
Léa Mysius
Producers: Les Films de Pierre’s Marie-Ange Luciani, F Comme Film’s Jean-Louis Livi
World Sales: mk2 Films

French filmmaker Léa Mysius has been making her way up the Croisette first with 2017’s Ava landing in the Critic’s Week section and then 2022’s The Five Devils in the Directors’ Fortnight – plus there are all the features that she helped co-write that have been selected for the main comp. This year, we can potentially bring out the cake. The Birthday Party moved into production in June of last year with the likes of Bastien Bouillon, Hafsia Herzi, Monica Bellucci, Twaba El Gharchy, Benoît Magimel, Paul Hamy and Alane Delhaye in a book to film thriller adaptation.

Set in a hamlet in rural France, the story follows a man and his wife, their daughter and an artist neighbour. As the man plans a surprise for his wife’s birthday, inexplicable happenings begin to disrupt the hamlet’s quiet existence before turning into a nightmarish chain of events when night falls.

Bitter Christmas
Pedro Almodóvar
Producers: El Deseo’s Agustín Almodóvar, Movistar Plus+’s Esther García
Sony Pictures Classics

There is this unwritten rule that if master filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar domestically drops a new oeuvre in his native Spain months before Cannes that he’ll have the opportunity to nonetheless be part of the Palme d’Or line-up. So possibly following in the same pattern as Bad Education (2004), Volver (2006) and Julieta (2016), Bitter Christmas (which bowed last week) could join this select group of comp offerings. Filmed in June of last year, this stars Bárbara Lennie, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Victoria Luengo, Patrick Criado, Milena Smit, Quim Gutiérrez.

This follows Elsa, an advertising director whose mother dies during a long December holiday. She works non-stop and, without realizing, doesn’t give herself time to mourn her mother’s absence. After a crisis, Elsa decides to travel to the island of Lanzarote accompanied by her friend Patricia, who also needs to get away from the city. The story of these characters run parallel to that of a screenwriter and film director, exploring how life and fiction are inseparably linked, sometimes painfully so.

Butterfly Jam
Kantemir Balagov
Producers: Why Not Production’s Pascal Caucheteux, Pauline Lamy, AR Content’s Alexander Rodnyansky, Gaetan Rousseau
World Sales: Goodfellas

The former student of Alexander Sokurov parachuted into the Un Certain Regard section on two occasions and left his mark (especially with the FIPRESCI folks) with his sombre offerings of 2017’s Closeness, and 2019’s Beanpole — for which he won the Best Director prize in the section. There were some hiccups along the way with his third feature that altered the course and DNA of the project but then it brought a whole new dimension tying him to different creative film communities. Shot in March of last year, Kantemir Balagov nabbed Barry Keoghan, Riley Keough and Harry Melling (plus newcomer Talha Akdoganv) for Butterfly Jam. Here Balagov teamed with the great cinematographer Jomo Fray.

15-year-old Pyteh lives in New Jersey’s Circassian community where his father and aunt run a diner specializing in Circassian cuisine. The business is struggling. When he’s not helping out in the restaurant, the boy is training to become a professional wrestler. After one of his father’s misguided schemes goes wrong, Pyteh must come to terms with the man his beloved father is – and isn’t – and finds himself confronted with a violence that will force him to grow up faster than he would like.

Known for a cinema of quiet realism, spatial choreography, her sensory storytelling exploring labor, family intimacy, and the fragile rhythms of everyday life, Mexican filmmaker Lila Avilés landed on the film scene with 2018’s assured The Chambermaid (a TIFF selection) and followed that up with 2023’s masterwork Tótem (a Berlinale competition selection). We believe that her under-the-radar third feature Cábula might be ready and while the specifics remain under lock and key, her previous efforts point to another slice of delicately observed, intimate filmmaking.

The Costume
Corneliu Porumboiu
Producers: Lumen’s Juliette Schrameck
World Sales: mk2 Films

With the exception of 2013’s When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism, Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu has premiered all of his fiction feature films on the Croisette. Winning the coveted Caméra d’Or in 2006 for 12:08 East of Bucharest, his 2009 film Police, Adjective and 2015’s The Treasure landed in the Un Certain Regard both winning prizes and his first and only trip in competition was back in 2019 with The Whistlers. He moved onto his first French language film with The Costume back in August of last year. The film recently landed a Fondazione Prada Film Fund.

Louis, a part-time tenor and chronic dreamer, arrives at a talent show in the Basque Country wearing a legendary costume that belonged to the singer Luis Mariano, whom he believes to be his father. The dazzling, embroidered suit conceals secrets and desires that trigger unexpected pursuits and encounters. Amidst adventure, misunderstandings, and music, the search for a legacy turns into a journey of self-discovery.

Dansker
Jonas Poher Rasmussen
Producers: TBD.
World Sales: TBD.

Selected for the canceled Cannes 2020 edition, and then winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Documentary competition at Sundance, Flee skyrocketed to epic proportions as it became the first film ever nominated for Best Documentary, Best Animation, and Best International Feature at the 2022 Academy Awards. Danish filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen was then attached to direct the 2D animated feature Dansker which is based on Danish trilogy by Halfdan Pisket. Godland‘s Vic Carmen Sonne and Elliott Crosset Hove have been listed as voice talent. Other than recent grant news, there haven’t been many updates but as is the case for animation its hard to tell whether this is close to the finish line. We’re getting Waltz with Bashir type vibes wit this one.

James has fled to Denmark. Leaving behind a dark past of trauma and violence in Turkey, he hopes to start anew and build a better life. However, he struggles in vain to establish a life as a «foreign worker» in 1970s Denmark. Unable to speak the language and lacking education, he ends up on the outskirts of society. He’s slowly drawn into a criminal underworld, where you either get trampled on or become the one doing the trampling.

The Dream Adventure
Valeska Grisebach
Producers: Komplizen Film’s Jonas Dornbach, Janine Jackowski, Maren Ade
World Sales: TBD

Filmed all the way back in October 2023, the timing suggests that 2026 may finally deliver Valeska Grisebach’s long-awaited fourth feature. After debuting with Mein Stern (2001) and following with Sehnsucht (2006), she made a major splash a decade later when Western premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section in 2017. Western’s Syuleyman Letifov joins Yana Radeva and Velko Frandev topline The Dream Adventure. Bernhard Keller returns as Grisebach’s cinematographer.

In a border town in southeastern Bulgaria, a woman becomes involved in an illegal trade to help a man whom she only knows fleetingly, but with whom she shares a special intimacy. She embarks on an adventure in his place, entering dangerous territory where she confronts both her own desires and her past.

Dora
July Jung
Production Co.: The French Connection, RedPeter Films, Les Films Fauves.
World Sales: TBD

Korea’s answer to Kelly Reichardt, filmmaker July Jung has emerged as one of the most exciting voices in world cinema. With both of her features premiering in Cannes, she looks ready to join the ranks of contemporary Asian cinema’s major auteurs. Our bet? Her next film climbs straight to the Croisette’s red carpet steps. She premiered in the Un Certain Regard section in 2014 with A Girl at My Door. Actress Doona Bae team up again for the deliciously disturbing 2022 drama Next Sohee (a Critic’s Week selection). Fast forward to August of last year – Dora is a South Korea, France and Luxembourg co-production with thesps Kim Do-yeon and Sakura Ando.

Dora, a young girl with physical and mental illness, finds healing through love, overcoming love and hate, revealing moments of fascination.

Estela de sombra
Carlos Reygadas
Producers: Beata Rzeźniczek, Klaudia Śmieja-Rostworowska and Ewa Puszczyńska.
World Sales: TBD.

Carlos Reygadas exploded onto the film scene with Japón (2002), his Directors’ Fortnight premiere earning a Special Distinction Caméra d’Or. He quickly cemented his Cannes pedigree with three consecutive competition entries: the audacious Battle in Heaven (2005), the luminous Silent Light (2007, Jury Prize), and the hypnotic Post Tenebras Lux (2012, Best Director). Taking a slower pace between projects, his most recent feature, Our Time (2019), premiered in Venice. He was part of the Cannes jury last year and our bet is that he’d be itching to return to comp with his sixth feature. Estela de sombra aka Wake of Umbra has been quietly gestating in post-production.

Surrounded by the grandiose rocks of a Mexican beach, two couples of young painters bend the moral rules set upon them, while an obscure strange figure observes. Their audacity will be judged and punished, sealing their destinies forever. This traverses time and space, encountering one another in various incarnations, settings, and social roles.

Part II: dropping Sunday.