When the Festival de Cannes revealed this year’s poster, a fetching production still of “Thelma & Louise” co-stars Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis looking lithe on the hood of a convertible, their expressions somewhere between “Come hither” and “Go away,” I learned that an awful lot of people seem to dislike the film as much as I do. I can still recall how irritated I felt watching it on Closing Night 35 years ago. And I can still hear the French-speaking colleague beside me exclaim “But these chicks are too stupid to live!”
Another road movie will be celebrated this year at Cannes, 25 years after it launched a franchise that grew to 11 films: “The Fast & the Furious.” For those who find a screening of “The Fast & the Furious” potentially frivolous, be it known that due to the ravages of the U.S. “excursion” to the Strait of Hormuz, the price of Vin Diesel has doubled.
Unlike the open road, Cannes is a closed trade show. It’s easier to glimpse the dark side of the moon than it is to see the inside of a darkened Cannes theater if you haven’t scored the right credentials. Commendably, the festival has, gradually, branched out into making festival fare way more available to rank and file film goers all over France. For the price of a regular ticket, regular folks can watch a simulcast of the Opening Ceremony followed by the Opening Night Film, Pierre Salvadori’s “The Electric Kiss.” Some 200 cinemas will participate while the movie itself, a comedy about contacting the spirit world while fleecing the real world set in 1920s Paris will hit 900 screens the next day.
Seven of the 22 films in the Official Competition will be released during the 12 days of the Festival, with many others slated for theatrical slots before the autumn. The entire line-up of the two major side bars Un Certain Regard and Directors Fortnight will show immediately after the Festival from May 27th to June 16th, with International Critics Week replay in-between.
What this means is that you can re-create Cannes—except for the shimmering sea and no-nonsense security staff turning your bag inside out—in Paris. It helps to know French to take full advantage but much like the Swifties who figured out that they could pay for a transatlantic flight, a few nights hotel AND buy a ticket to see Taylor Swift in Paris and still pay less than it would cost them to attend a concert in the U.S., it’s a cheaper proposition. Plus, critics and influencers will have weighed in on what’s « worth » seeing.
And the movies will be projected on the big screen, not relegated to streaming outlets. There’s nothing inherently wrong with streaming, except that it draws on servers that use up valuable resources.
Press conférences in Cannes used to be so exclusive that you’d get your camera confiscated if you tried to sneak it inside the room. Now, to its credit, the Festival posts conferences online. Still, there’s something exciting about being jammed into an incredibly uncomfortable chair with no elbow room while breathing some of the same air molecules as Harrison Ford or Brad Pitt.
Festival President Iris Knobloch said at the April 10th reveal of the Official line-up that “Some people ask what good is it to talk cinema when things in the real world are going so poorly?” But she quickly added that Cannes was founded in a world in major upheaval on the eve of WWII. And that last year the festival showed work from 50 countries. “We have a clear responsibility: To make films visible. We have to ensure the freedom to create, for humans. And only for humans. We will not be compliant in the face of A.I. A film is not an assemblage of data.”
Of the 22 films in the Official Competition (which means that the main jury will see all of them and award the Golden Palm to one of them) only 3 do not have French co-production money. I can’t seem to come up with a glib analogy for what would happen to world cinema if France dropped out. What if book publishers had to do without vowels, maybe?
The first edition of the Festival was called off in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland.
It is as inspiring as it is sightly eerie to see that there are SO MANY stories firmly anchored in WWII. And I’m pretty sure there’s an undercurrent here of War Is A Bad Idea. This theme is so prevalent in films from all over the world that maybe instead of renaming the US Dept of Defense the Dept of War, the administration could have ordered up signs and letterhead emblazoned with “Dept of Oh, C’mon — Not THIS Again.”
Quentin Tarantino actually did a pretty magnificent job of playing up the bottomless idiocy of Nazi policies in his Cannes-premiered “Inglorious Basterds” back in 2009. And yet, in far too many places, we’re back to certain individuals proudly espousing Nazi slogans, defacing synagogues and desecrating Jewish cemeteries.
Much of the WWII fare is based on real people and events.
Pawel Pawlikowski ’s “Fatherland” is set in 1949 when Nobel Prize-winning novelist Thomas Mann returns to Germany from the U.S. and, in the company of his daughter (Sandra Huller), undertakes a road trip across a country in ruins.
If all you know about Charles De Gaulle is that they named the main Paris airport after him, “De Gaulle: Tilting Iron” should prove educational. De Gaulle was ridiculously tall and looked fab in uniform. An attempt on his life gave us “The Day of the Jackal.” (Two film adaptations of Frederick Forsythe’s novel and a Peacock series starring Eddie Redmayne.) De Gaulle, who led the Free French from England and later became President of France famously said, “How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?” He did a pretty good job.
My late landlady, Madeleine Weiller, who was born in 1905 and died at age 102 in 2007, remembered the Armistice for WWI, remembered Lindbergh landing in Paris and would sit up straighter when she mentioned De Gaulle’s name. Her mother learned piano from a student of Chopin’s—and Madeleine was fond of grumbling that her fellow citizens “Have no idea how to play Chopin!”—but it was De Gaulle who activated her spine. Probably because his backbone did so much for the cause of freedom.
It is one of two free-standing films, to be released a month apart this summer. It is rumored to be one of the costliest French productions ever. The director, Antonin Baudry, whose previous film was a real nail biter about a nuclear submarine, has said that he wanted to tell this story for young people, who know next to nothing about a man whose accomplishments they should know better than that. He emphasizes that the source book, whose author spoke with a great many people who knew the real De Gaulle, revealed that in addition to being a brave, charismatic leader with impressive military acumen, General Charles De Gaulle was, well, slightly nuts.
Jean Moulin is nearly as enduring a presence in 20th century French collective history as is De Gaulle. Everybody is familiar with the portrait of him looking the way you want a Resistance hero to look: fedora, scarf. Moulin coordinated and inspired life-risking people but was captured by the Gestapo. The film apparently concentrates on the interrogation of Moulin by Nazi henchman Klaus Barbie, aka The Butcher of Lyon.
Since Hungarian director Laszlo Nemes’ “Son of Saul” has never left me, I suspect “Moulin” will be harrowing and very special. This past October, I shared a car from the Vienna airport with Lars Eidinger, who plays Barbie. He was coming to the Vienna International Film Festival for just one day to introduce the brilliant German director Edgar Reitz (“Heimat”), still going strong at 93. Eidinger allowed as how he was a bit nervous because he was to begin shooting for Nemes the next day. He said he had resolved to stop playing Nazis on screen but that the role of Barbie was simply too important to pass up.
He also shared a tidbit of German psychology that I found stunning. He said that Reitz had told him that the reason Germans did not much speak of the war after the war wasn’t because they were so embarrassed or contrite or anything like that but because they felt bereft—they had put SUCH faith in der Fuhrer and he had been taken from them along with the world he promised. That wasn’t exactly something you could say aloud after the war.
In “A Man of His Time,” Emmanuel Marre tackles the story of his own great-grandfather who, in the 1940s arrives in Vichy with a manuscript that he hopes will save France. Swann Arlaud (“Anatomy of a Fall”) plays Henri Marre.
You can jump up and down all you want about “Anatomy of a Fall,” which Arthur Harari co-wrote with director Justine Triet but it is Harari’s mind-blowingly intense 2021 film “Onoda — 10,000 Nights in the Jungle” that has cemented him in my mind as a fearlessly skilled storyteller. “Onoda” told the real-life tale of a Japanese soldier who went on living in the jungle for decades because he refused to believe that Japan had lost the war and surrendered (There’s that WWII thing again.)
So, Harari’s new feature as writer/director, “The Unknown,” has an intriguing premise: Don’t you find it disconcerting, if you’re a man, to wake up in the body of a woman you don’t know after a night of romance?
Speaking of roving gender, I love the pitch for adult animation “Jim Queen.” A gay influencer investigates a mysterious virus that turns gay men straight. Some American states are still enthusiastic about so-called conversion therapy. The premise of a virus determining one’s sexuality feels both obvious and inventive. Animators Nicolas Athane and Marco Nguyen have solid credentials.
I suppose Andrei Zvyagintsev could make a bad film if he really put his mind to it but I’ve found his previous 5 features to have captured a tone and visuals that went in through my eyeballs and took up residence in my memory. They really are films I’ll never forget. « Minotaur » also has war on its mind — it’s set in a small Russian town in 2022 as Russia invades Ukraine.
A new film from German director Volker Schlondorff can only be cause for celebration. His 1979 feature “The Tin Drum” shared the Golden Palm with « Apocalypse Now. » Ambitious films that have stood the test of time. WWII is a major component of “Visitation,” a saga of a lakeside house in Berlin and the people who live there over the decades.
Speaking of WWII, actor Daniel Auteuil’s sixth film as a director, “When the Night Falls,” explores the true story of a civil servant and a priest who, in Lyon, worked together to save foreign children from being deported during the Nazi Occupation. Auteuil also appears in the film with an outstanding cast including Antoine Reinartz, Grégory Gadebois and Luana Bajrami
History teacher Samuel Paty was slaughtered—decapitated—by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee in 2020. Just typing this matter-of-fact description of “L’Abandon” feels unreal.
The US, of course, has so many mass shootings, many of them set in schools that I wish I had a nickel for every time a European has asked me “What IS it with you people and guns?” I wish I had an answer. Uh, the right to bear arms is in our founding documents and, uh, beats me.
Paty was murdered because he taught his high schoolers about the irreverent cartoons that ostensibly motivated the attack on Charlie Hebdo. The lecture was part of the curriculum on free expression and Paty invited any Muslim students who wished to, to leave the classroom. He wanted his students to think for themselves. Because we know where the final 11 days of Paty’s life are headed, I assume the film will be a tense viewing experience.
Writer/director Jane Schoenbrun has a flair for catchy titles. After “I Saw the TV Glow” they’re back with “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.” It’s apparently a horror film about making a horror film, infused with a queer sensibility.
Apple TV subscribers will only have to wait until May 29th to see John Travolta’s one hour long film “Propeller One-Way Night Coach,” adapted from a childrens book he wrote about his love of airplanes. Travolta is an experienced pilot and this appears to be a flight of fancy. I have heard colleagues smirking at the idea of Travolta directing but I say he’s earned it. Tom Cruise has been known to dangle off landing gear for real and Travolta, I’m told, has flown his own aircraft to France more than once. Give the guy a break. If there’s technical trouble on a commercial flight nobody gets on the public address system and says “Is there a film critic on board? A trade reporter? We’re losing altitude…”
The play based on the same real life court case as “Woman on Trial (L’Affaire Marie Claire)” just won 3 Molière Awards—France’s answer to the Tonys—including Best Play At A Private Theater. (State supported theaters and commercial ones each receive segregated nominations and awards.) It recounts the true story of lawyer Gisele Halmi who defended a 16-year-old who had had an illegal abortion following a rape. The court case took place in 1972 in the Paris suburb of Bobigny. It was instrumental in securing the right to end a pregnancy in France. When the US Supreme Court reversed Roe v Wade, the French were so disturbed and alarmed that a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy was incorporated into the French constitution. In the film, Halimi is portrayed by Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Pedro Almodovar, competing with “Bitter Christmas,” has said that “desire” is at the root of filmic storytelling. When his brother Augustin went to register their company, El Deseo, in 1985, the clerk thought they were applying to open a sex club.
There is an essay in Air Mail this week about how American actors and directors steered clear of Cannes the year after that, in 1986, because Muammar al-Qaddafi had given them reason to fear a terrorist attack. Only (author of the reminiscence) Mitch Glazer and Griffin Dunne attended for the premiere of Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours.” Scorsese went on to win Best Director. It’s hard to believe that that was 40 years ago.
Terrorism is no laughing matter and the City of Cannes takes major precautions to assure public safety.
At one point, perhaps in 2010, an editor at Variety wanted to assign me a piece on how Osama Bin Laden was a threat to the Festival. (While he had announced plans for Al Queda to retaliate against France for being less than welcoming to Muslim garb for women, this sounded like a poor pitch for a bad movie to me.) She assured me the threat to Cannes was genuine. And how was I supposed to research such a story? Not a lot of arms dealers and religious fanatics in my address book.
Rumor has it that the day he died, Bin Laden had been watching Tom and Jerry cartoons on home video. While that shows fine taste in animation it doesn’t fully jibe with the fear-inducing mantle of Scary Terrorist.
The irony? The real “terrorist” leaving destruction in his wake turned out to be Harvey Weinstein. There is plenty of corroboration that Weinstein behaved very very badly each year in Cannes and, according to his chauffeur—who wrote a harrowing serious book about trying to cater to Weinstein’s rarely reasonable and never polite demands for his final 6 trips to the Festival—even pushed a young assistant off a boat, into the water where he could have drowned. The young man’s mistake? Never having been to Cannes and not speaking French he had no idea that the French Coast Guard has an evening cut-off for boat traffic, meaning Weinstein had to be driven back to the Hotel du Cap instead of travelling by boat. And the driver was waiting at the far off Hotel, not by the harbor in town.
Aspiring Hollywood movers and shakers used to get their start in the mailroom. I’m not sure there IS a mailroom anymore. Or that anybody ever has to steam open an email.
At current gas prices I’m not sure Thelma and Louise would have made it all the way to their date with an early selfie.
Hence then, the article about an essential showcase in a difficult time cannes film festival 2026 preview was published today ( ) and is available on Roger Ebert ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( An Essential Showcase in a Difficult Time: Cannes Film Festival 2026 Preview )
Also on site :
- Crocs’ 'Supportive' $30 Platform Sandals at Walmart Feel Like 'Walking on Air'
- Behind Big Oil’s first-quarter beat: The quiet rise of trading desks
- Instructure strikes deal with hackers who breached it twice .. TechCrunch