Gillian Anderson and Cara Delevingne to hit Cannes as auteur heavyweights dominate festival lineup | Film
Gillian Anderson, Rami Malek, Cara Delevingne and John Travolta are expected to walk the red carpet at Cannes this year, as the world’s most influential film festival announces an auteur-heavy lineup for its 79th edition.
Competing for the highly acclaimed Palme d’Or will be the new films of heavyweights Pedro Almodóvar, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Paweł Pawlikowski, László Nemes and Asghar Farhadi.
Spanish director Almodóvar, who previously won awards at Cannes for his films My Mother and All About the Volver, makes a comeback with A Bitter Christmas, about a group of filmmaker friends who cannibalize each other’s lives for the sake of their work.
Sandra Hüller plays the daughter of German novelist Thomas Mann in the Oscar-winning Polish director’s Pawlikowski’s Homeland, which takes place on the eve of the Manns’ return from exile in America after the Second World War.
Hungarian director Nemes, who won an Oscar in 2016 with his film Son of Saul, returns with the French resistance drama Moulin, while Romanian director Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) returns with the Norwegian film Fjord.
Exiled Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan) will premiere Minotaur, a political thriller about a Russian business executive who discovers his wife is having an affair. Two-time Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) is directing Parallel Lives, starring Isabelle Huppert and Vincent Cassel.
Two of Japan’s leading filmmakers will present new films on the French Riviera; Drive My Car director Ryusuke Hamaguchi will screen All of a Sudden, set in a Paris nursing home, and the premiere of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s AI-themed sci-fi drama Sheep in the Box.
While conversations on the outskirts of last year’s festival were dominated by US President Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on “films made on foreign soil”, the almost complete absence of American directors in this year’s competition lineup is notable.
The only U.S. director in the main competition is Ira Sachs with The Man I Loved, a musical extravaganza starring Rami Malek, Tom Sturridge and Rebecca Hall about the impact of the AIDS epidemic on struggling artists.
In the Un Certain Regard section, there will be the premieres of American filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, starring Gillian Anderson, and Jordan Firstman’s directorial debut, Club Kid, starring herself, Cara Delevingne, Diego Calva and Eldar Isgandarov.
Hollywood star Andy Garcia’s noir-like Diamond will be screened out of competition but comes with a starry cast including Bill Murray, Dustin Hoffman, Vicky Krieps and Danny Huston.
This year’s Cannes film festival will take place on the Côte d’Azur from 12 to 23 May 2026. South Korean director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy), who took over from French actor Juliette Binoche, will be the jury president for the 79th edition of the festival.
Cannes director Thierry Frémaux said that 2,491 films from 141 countries applied to the festival. “That’s 1,000 more than just 10 years ago,” he said at Thursday’s press conference.
The festival has already announced that it will present John Travolta’s directorial debut, Propeller One-Way Night Coach, based on his own 1997 book about a young aviation enthusiast who takes his first flight across America. The Hollywood star himself is a licensed pilot.
Stephen Soderbergh, who heads the documentary cast, will present John Lennon: The Last Interview, which focuses on the former Beatle’s interview the afternoon before he was shot in December 1980.
It is certain that France’s playboy footballing icon Eric Cantona will grace the Croisette this year; because the former France international and former Manchester United striker is the subject of a new feature-length documentary, including interviews with David Beckham and Alex Ferguson in the specials section and a score by Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll.
Football rivalry will be the main theme of Cannes this year. The Match, shot by Argentinian director Juan Cabral and Spanish filmmaker Santiago Franco, will delve into the “Hand of God” World Cup quarter-final between England and Argentina in 1986 and bring to a head the rivalry that has been heating up over the Falkland Islands.
There will also be a special screening of veteran US director Ron Howard’s self-titled documentary about photographer Richard Avedon.
Frémaux said that the announced games make up “95%” of the entire series. Cannes is known for sneaking other productions into the main competition as it gets closer to the start of the festival.
