Is the 2026 Cannes Film Festival Bracing for Something?

This year’s Cannes Film Festival is already beginning to feel slightly foreboding. No Hollywood movies, a sudden preponderance of Mark Zuckerberg, Jacob Elordi’s broken foot, and a press conference where everyone (save for Paul Laverty, who slammed Hollywood for “blacklisting” Susan Sarandon and Javier Bardem for “opposing the murder of women and children in Gaza”) seemed too nervous to say anything substantive about politics or the rapid proliferation of AI or even whether Hollywood had made real change when it came to hiring women.

At the opening ceremony, in front of a massive backdrop of Thelma and Louise looking relaxed in their car in the sun (foreboding), Jury President Park Chan-wook spoke briefly about the responsibility that lay before him — judging the 22 films in competition with “thoughtfulness.” “I asked Paul Laverty over there if he fought a lot with Ken Loach when they were working together, and he said, ‘We argued a lot but we didn’t fight.’ Our jurors will do the same. To everyone here today, I sincerely hope that you don’t fight with the people around you, but you argue sufficiently,” Park added, after a retrospective of his many films about passionate, violent revenge. 

Elijah Wood was next, introducing Peter Jackson — who’s at the festival to receive an honorary Palme d’Or and for a “rendezvous” chat later this week — and speaking pointedly about how, even as Jackson’s films are massive in scale and made with complicated technology, they’re all infused with “heart.” Jackson followed soon after with a sweet speech about how he couldn’t have had the success he did with the Lord of the Rings films without the support of the festival, where he previewed footage in 2001, silencing early naysayers who thought the whole thing might be a wildly expensive mistake. He joked that the award was “Cannes’s apology for not giving Bad Taste the Palme d’Or in 1988.” Two French women then performed a particularly spooky version of the Beatles’ “Get Back.” I’m not just saying that because of this foreboding theme I’ve established; it was lit blood red, and at one point the women leaned forward and chanted, in a low voice, “Get back to where you once belonged.”

Fortunately, Jane Fonda and Gong Li did not take this instruction at face value and hopped onstage to open the festival. Fonda got immediately fiery and political, as she often does. “I believe that cinema has always been an act of resistance because we tell the stories and stories are what make a civilization,” she said. “Stories that bring empathy to the marginalized, stories that allow us to feel across difference, stories that let us see that there is an alternative future that is possible. Standing beside Li tonight, I’m reminded why this festival matters. Here in Cannes, story comes first — the courage to tell it comes first. So let’s celebrate audacity, freedom, and the fierce act of creation.”