A BRIEF CANNES CATCH-UP (FROM DAY 10)


TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA

"Attackers" since yesterday (May 20) have taken down Filmleaf, making my 2026 Cannes coverage temporarily inaccessible with all its lists, photos, and thumbnail reviews. So meanwhile here is some basic information on some of the most visible films of the festival. More to come.

There are Honorary Palmes d'Or awarded May 12 and 15 to Peter Jackson and John Travolta, and on the 23rd to Barbra Streisand. The top prizes, including the feature film Palme d'Or and Jury Prize, will be awarded on closing day, which is Saturday, May 23.

Early festival buzz and critical consensus point to FATHERLAND and HOPE as top contenders for the Palme d'Or, FJORD maybe likely for the Jury Prize.

FATHERLAND (Pawel Pawlikowski) Was the first big prestige film of the festival, and is about the writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter (Sandra Hüller) on a tour with her driving a black Buick Cruiser as they revisit Germany (East and West) right after the end of WWII. In Competition. Metascore 90. Distributor: MUBI.

ALL OF A SUDDEN (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi) with Tao Okamoto, Virginie Efira, Kyozo Nagatsuka, Jean-Charles Clichet, mainly Virginie and Tao, is a three-hour-plus conversation about capitalism and life and death and another masterpiece from the director of DRIVE MY CAR that again, everybody likes. In Competition. Metascore: 87. US distributor: NEON.

PAPER TIGER (James Gray) is another of the director's New York tales of family and ethnicity: Two brothers pursue the American Dream but get entangled in a dangerous Russian mafia scheme that terrorizes their family. This scores 77% on Metacritic - good, but not good enough, which was the Oscar Experts' reaction, watchable, but a bit too conventional to be Cannes award material. 2.8 on the Jury Grid. US distributor: NEON.

CLUB KID (Jordan Firstman) follows a washed-up underground party promoter who is unexpectedly forced to care for a son he never knew he had. With Cara Delevingne, Diego Calva, Reggie Absolom. The comic's debut as a director was a breeakout hit in Un Certain Regard that everybody rushed to see. Picked up by A24, Metascore 85.


FJORD

FJORD (Cristian Mungiu) in Competition is about a conservative Christian family with five kids who find the kids taken into foster care and themselves in trouble with the law when they move from Romania to ultra liberal Norway when the eldest shows evidence of corporal punishment at home. The parents are played by Renate Reinsve (recently highly visible in a string of hits, including Trier's SENTIMENTAL VALUE last year)_ and Sebastian Stan (who has Romanian background). A feature about globalization and culture clash. Acquired by NEON, Metascore 82%.

TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA (Jane Schoenbrun), opening film of the Un Certain Regard section, has been a major Cannes hit. It is a meta-slasher full of amusing pop references that stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson and has generated significant buzz. MUBI, Metascore 92%.

MINOTAUR (Andrey Zvyagitsev) uses Claude Chabrol's UN FEMME INFIDÈLE as a template for a tale that follows a wealthy shipping executive in 2022 wartime Russia. whose controlled life unravels on multiple levels when he discovers his wife's affair and faces the political and moral nightmare of conscripting his own workers for the Ukraine war. I still remember the surprise and thrill of discovering this director with his 2003 THE RETURN. This is Zvygintsev's fourth film at Cannes, and all three before have won awards. Zvyagintsev nearly died of Covid and spent a year in hospitals, but this comeback 9 years later shows no loss of creative powers. He lives in France now and shot this film in Latvia. In Competition, picked up by MUBI, Metascore 90%.

HOPE/HOPEU (Na Hong-jin) , in Competition, a big budget South Korean sci-fi alien thriller got a lot of attention. It stars Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander. However, the Oscar Expert twins, Cole and Mason Jaeger, ultimately found it wanting because the monsters were no good. Acauired by NEON, Metascore 68.

BITTER CHRISTMAS/AMARGA NAVIDAD (Pedro Almodóvar ), in Competition, is another autobiographical comedy-drama from the Spaniard, who is now 76. It features Bárbara Lennie and Leonardo Sbaraglia. Almodóvar made a grand appearance at Cannes and is still upstanding. Acquired by Sony Pictures Classics, Metascore 70.


ISABELLE HUPPERT IN PARALLEL TALES

PARALLEL TALES (Asghar Farhadi), in Competition, set in Paris with Isabelle Huppert, Vincent Cassel. Virginie Efira, Adam Bassa, India Hair, and Pierre Niney, with a cameo from Catherine Deneuve is a complicated (and star-studded) Hitchcockian piece blurring reality and fiction about a writer who spies on her neighbors to get inspiration. It did very poorly (Metascore 42%); maybe it's too complicated or just doesn't come together.

GARANCE/ANOTHER DAY[ (Jeanne Herry) , in Competition, is a French drama starring Adèle Exarchopoulos about the progressively worsening alcoholism of a young actress called Garance. It reportedly became "the most talked-about film of the festival," and received a "record-challenging" standing ovation. However critically it has not fared well (Metacritic rating 56%).

DIAMOND (Andy Garcia): In his "starry homage" to film noir, Garcia also stars alongside Brendan Fraser and Vicky Krieps with Bill Murray, Brendan Fraser, Dustin Hoffman, et al., in a high profile murder story set in LA. Out of Competition, it sounds like fun. But it's been called "disappointingly superficial" and "charming but slight" by critics.


LA GRAVIDA

LA GRADIVA (Marine Atlan) won the Grand Prix at Critics Week (Semaine de la Critique) , already announced (May 21). This is about a class trip to Pompei, but, using previous non-actors, avoids conventional tropes of teen movies to make its young characters fully realized people with interior lives. The title refers to the story Gradiva: A Pompeian Fantasy by Wilhelm Jensen (made more famous by Freud) of an archaeologist who falls in love with a bas relief he names "la gradiva" ("she who walks") . Critic-viewers seem to absolutely love this film and declare the young main actor Colas Quignard already a star.

A MAN OF HIS TIME (Emanuel Marre). Swann Arlaud is one of France's most memorable supporting actors and has risen in visibility lately, stars here s as a wartime French collaborator, based on the filmmaker's grandfather, who worked for the Vichy regime. Jordan Mintzer points out this kind of topic has been shunned ever since Louis Malle's victimization for his great Lacombe Lucien (a fascinating film, but it took a lot time to get to see it). A 2.8 on the Screen Daily Jury Grid.A writer who rises only to be a local official who, in "one unforgivable instance, signs off on transports shipping Jewish families toward the east," this highlights the banality of evil.


JUDE AKUWUDIKE AND SOPHIE OKONEDO IN CLARISSA

CLARISSA (Mitia Capellier-Audat (Arie and Chuko Esiri) is "a quietly dazzling Nigerian reinterpretation" of Virginia Woolf's l Mrs. Dalloway set in Lagos that was a big hit at Directors' Fortnight . Jessica Kiang describes how successfully (for a change?) this film (lush 35mm.) cuts back and forth between today when the heroine hosts a society party and a time in her youth when so many of the guests where already in her life (with the younger actors effectively depicting the older ones), but everyone's lives were full of possibilities. A sophomore film that fulfills the promise. US distribotor: Neon.

QUEER CINEMA IN COMPETITION: IRA SACHS, LUKAS DHONT AND LA BOLA NEGRA

THE MAN I LOVE (Ira Sachs). (In Competition.) Rami Malek may have delivered a career-best " blazingly alive" performance in Ira Sachs' AIDS-era vision of a "vibrant" late-eighties downtown New York artists playground. Malek's character is a singer and a highlight is a "mesmerizing rendition" of the titular song. Not at all a conventional AIDS film or weepie, emotion strongest in the songs (but not a musical). With Rebecca Hall, Tom Sturridge and Luther Ford. Sachs in good form with a squarely LGBTQ+-themed tale. Metascore 78%. Letterboxd 3.3. (Here's my plug also for Sachs' not unrelated film of last year, Peter Hujar's Day.)


COWARD

COWARD (Lukas Dhont) (also in Competition) is quite another thing, set in during WWI. Ryan Latanzo says Dhont's best film yet, though too restrained to move deeply. It's about two beautiful young men (Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne), one a drag entertainer for troops, who are freer to love each other surreptitiously in the all-male combat setting than they would be in civilian life. The film questions "what it is to be brave." Acquired by MUBI for international territories, this got a big ovation in Competition premiere at Cannes, but David Rooney in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER says this film "reeks of manneristic affectation and phoniness."

LA BOLA NEGRA'THE BLACK BALL (Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi). Known as the two Javis in Spain, no doubt not harmed by Pedro Almodóvar being the top director in Spain for years, they are both a creative team and a couple. Their film, in Competition, tells the interconnected stories of three gay men across three different eras (1932, 1937, and 2017), united by their sexuality, queer history, and a lost Federico García Lorca manuscript. Critics have celebrated the sweeping epic for its gorgeous cinematography, emotional weight, and powerful tribute to lost queer storytellers. Maybe lacking in structural discipline and overlong (160 mis.) , it's still been called "vivid, sweeping epic" with"thrilling technical bravado," and "unshakeable self-confidence. " It's got a show-stopping cameo by Penélope Cruz (also has Glenn Close). Metascore 85, it received a lengthy ovation at the premiere (over 20 mins.) and is the subject of a bidding war between A24, Mubi and Netflix. This could be a late arriving Palme d'Or contender, but Guy Lodge in VARIETY warns it" often plays as turgidly overblown melodrama."


LA BOLA NEGRA

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.