Cannes Film Festival 2026 Lineup: Asghar Farhadi, Pedro Almodóvar, Ira Sachs, Hirokazu Kore-eda Set for Auteur-Driven Competition

Cannes Film Festival will favor the auteurs this year, with Asghar Farhadi, Pedro Almodóvar, Paweł Pawlikowski, Ira Sachs, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Laszlo Nemes and Ryusuke Hamaguchi premiering new films in competition.

After a 2025 edition which had a large Hollywood presence with “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” and Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest,” this year’s Cannes will be dominated by international cinema and indie filmmakers. Sachs is the only American director in competition with “The Man I Love,” a musical fantasy starring Rami Malek and dealing with the AIDS crisis in ’80s New York. However, Un Certain Regard has several U.S. films including “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” helmed by Jane Schoenbrun and starring Hannah Einbinder (“Hacks”) and Gillian Anderson (“Sex Education”); and Jordan Firstman’s directorial debut “Club Kid” featuring himself, Cara Delevingne, Diego Calva and Eldar Isgandarov.

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Kicking off the announcement on Thursday, Cannes’ longtime chief Thierry Fremaux said that “95% of the selection” would be revealed, with some films still being decided in the next few weeks. “There are sometimes minor delays in certain details, requiring us to finish it a little later and provide the final touches, which will be completed next week or the week after,” he said.

Fremaux noted that 2,541 feature films were submitted for official selection. “That’s 1,000 more than just 10 years ago. When I speak of vitality, I’m also referring to a kind of quantitative vitality — with entries from 141 countries, we’re approaching Olympic-level numbers — but here too, the goal is to screen films in a venue where they will be seen by the whole world,” he said.

There is a near unprecedented large number of French-language films in competition, three of which are directed by foreign helmers: Farhadi with “Parallel Tales,” Nemes with “Moulin” and Hamaguchi with “All of a Sudden.” There are also three French female directors in competition: Léa Mysius with “Histoires de la nuit,” Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet with “A Woman’s Life” and Jeanne Herry with “Garance.” Emmanuel Marre will also present “Notre Salut,” a historical drama about Vichy France starring “Anatomy of a Fall” breakout Swann Arlaud.

There are also two features in competition from German female filmmakers — Marie Kreutzer with “Gentle Monster” and Valeska Grisebach with “The Dreamed Adventure” — bringing the amount of women represented to five. “It’s a rather a high number of female directors in competition,” Fremaux said.

Notably absent from the lineup was James Gray’s “Paper Tiger” – starring Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver and Miles Teller — which was rumored to be in competition and would be the starriest film at Cannes this year. Though he didn’t mention it by name, Fremaux hinted before announcing the competition that “there’s one film you’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s not there!’ But it will be there, I’m telling you.”

“It’s not fake suspense, but there’s always contracts that are not yet signed, things that should be settled before the show in Cannes,” Fremaux added.

Last month, Fremaux told Variety in an interview that he’s observed that “studios are producing fewer blockbusters and fewer auteur films than in the past,” and pointed out that the festival was “dependent on nothing other than the films themselves.” While the 2025 roster showcased many U.S. movies, the most buzzy that came out of Cannes where non-English-language movies such as Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” which won the Oscar for international feature and earned a best picture nod alongside Wagner Moura’s “The Secret Agent.”

Of the lack of American and studio movies, Fremaux said on Thursday: “It’s important to note that when studios have a smaller presence at Cannes, it’s because they’re simply less active in the kind of cinema that used to allow them to come here.” But he also stressed that this year’s lack of studio films wasn’t part a trend. “Tom Cruise and Paramount were here just two years ago for ‘Mission: Impossible’ and ‘Top Gun,'” he said, before adding: “What I mean by that is that outside of studio cinema — independent cinema, cinema made outside of Los Angeles — continues to exist, and this selection will bear witness to that.”

As previously announced, the festival will kick off on May 12 with Pierre Salvadori’s 1920s-set comedy “The Electric Kiss” (“La Venus électrique”), while the jury will be presided over by celebrated South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook. The festival will pay tribute to Barbra Streisand and Peter Jackson, who will each receive an honorary Palme d’Or.

See the full lineup below, updating live.

OPENING FILM

“The Electric Kiss” (“La Venus électrique”), Pierre Salvadori

COMPETITION

“Minotaur,” Andrey Zvyagintsev

“El Ser Querido” (“The Beloved”), Rodrigo Sorogoyen  

“The Man I Love,” Ira Sachs 

“Fatherland,” Paweł Pawlikowski 

“Moulin,” Laszlo Nemes

“Histoire de la nuit” (“Stories of the Night”), Léa Mysius 

“Fjord,” Cristian Mungiu

“Notre salut,” Emmanuel Marre

“Gentle Monster,” Marie Kreutzer  

“Nagi Notes,” Koji Fukada

“Hope,” Na Hong-Jin

“Sheep in the Box,” Hirokazu Kore-eda

“Garance,” Jeanne Herry

“The Unknown,” Arthur Harrari

“Sudden,” Ryusuke Hamaguchi

“The Dreamed Adventure,” Valeska Grisebach

“Coward,” Lukas Dhont

“La Bola Negra” (“The Black Ball”), Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo

“A Woman’s Life,” Charline Bourgeois-Taquet

“Parallel Tales,” Asghar Farhadi 

“Bitter Christmas,” Pedro Almodovar 

OUT OF COMPETITION

“Her Private Hell,” Nicolas Winding Refn

“Diamond,” Andy Garcia

“Karma,” Guillaume Canet

“L’Objet Du Delit,” Agnes Jaoui

“De Gaulle: L’Âge de Fer,” Antonin Baudry

UN CERTAIN REGARD

“La más dulce,” Laïla Marrakchi

“Club Kid,” Jordan Firstman

“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” Jane Schoenbrun  

“Everytime,” Sandra Wollner

“I’ll Be Gone in June,” Katharina Rivilis

“Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep,” Rakan Mayasi

“The Meltdown,” Manuela Martelli

“Soy Tu Animal Materno” (“I Am Always Your Maternal Animal”), Valentina Maurel

“Elephants in the Fog,” Abhinash Bikram Shah

“Benimana,” Marie-Clementine Dusabejambo

“Le Corset,” Louis Clichy

“Congo Boy,” Rafiki Fariala

SPECIAL SCREENINGS

“John Lennon: The Last Interview,” Steven Soderbergh  

“Avedon,” Ron Howard

“Les Survivants du Che,” Christophe Réveille

“Les Matins Merveilleux,” Avril Besson

MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS

“Roma Elastica,” Betrand Mandico 

“Full Phil,” Quentin Dupieux 

“Colony,” Yeon Sang-ho

“Jim Queen,” Nicolas Athane and Marco Nguyen

“Sanguine,” Marion Le Coroller

CANNES PREMIERE

“Propeller One-Way Night Coach,” John Travolta

“The Samurai and the Prisoner,” Kiyoshi Kurosawa

“Heimsuchung,” Volker Schlöndorff

“The Game,” Juan Cabral and Santiago Franco

“The Third Night,” Daniel Auteuil