Cannes 79th Edition Opens 12 May with Salvadori’s The Electric Kiss: Park Chan-wook Leads Jury, Auteurs Dominate Competition

The 79th Cannes Film Festival runs from 12 to 23 May 2026, opening with Pierre Salvadori’s 1920s-set comedy The Electric Kiss (La Vénus électrique) — out of competition, in keeping with the tradition of opening on a French language title. South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook, the master director of Oldboy and No Other Choice, presides over a competition jury including Demi Moore, Stellan Skarsgård, Ruth Negga, Chloé Zhao, Laura Wandel, Diego Céspedes, Isaach De Bankolé and Paul Laverty. After the 2025 Hollywood-heavy edition led by Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible, the 2026 lineup tilts firmly back towards European and international auteurs.

The competition lineup

This year’s 21-film competition is dominated by established auteurs. Pedro Almodóvar returns with Bitter Christmas (Amarga Navidad), the only competition title to have premiered before the festival. Asghar Farhadi presents Parallel Tales (Histoires Parallèles), his second French-language production, while Paweł Pawlikowski brings Fatherland and Hirokazu Kore-eda presents Hope. Cristian Mungiu, the Romanian Palme d’Or winner of 2007, returns with Fjord. American director Ira Sachs is the only US competition entry, with The Man I Love, a musical fantasy starring Rami Malek that centres on the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York.

French and female voices

The competition includes a striking number of French-language productions, three directed by foreign helmers — Farhadi, Pawlikowski and Hamaguchi all working in French. Five films are directed by women, including Léa Mysius with Histoires de la nuit (The Birthday Party), Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet with A Woman’s Life (La Vie d’une Femme) and Jeanne Herry with Garance. The selection reflects festival director Thierry Frémaux‘s declared ambition to spotlight the French film industry’s resilience at a moment when global production has tilted towards franchise blockbusters.

Honorary Palmes for Jackson and Streisand

Two honorary Palmes d’Or are awarded this year: to filmmaker Peter Jackson, recognised at the opening on 12 May for his lifetime contribution to cinema and his Lord of the Rings legacy; and to actress, singer and director Barbra Streisand, who closes the festival on 23 May with the second honorary award. Streisand’s statement on accepting the honour was characteristically direct: “In these challenging times, movies have the ability to open our hearts and minds to stories that reflect our shared humanity.” The double honorary recognition gives the festival a particularly strong civic and cultural framing this year.

Pan’s Labyrinth at 20

One of the festival’s most anticipated heritage moments is the pre-opening screening on Tuesday 12 May at the Debussy Theatre: a 4K restored print of Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, marking the 20th anniversary of the film’s world premiere at the 2006 edition of the festival. The Cannes Classics section, dedicated to film preservation and restoration, also presents new 4K restorations of past Palme d’Or winners Man of Iron (1981) and Farewell My Concubine (1993), alongside a curated programme of silent shorts by Soviet-Armenian filmmaker Artavazd Peleshyan and a documentary tribute to Bruce and Laura Dern.

Un Certain Regard and the parallel sections

Beyond the main competition, the parallel sections provide the most reliable launchpad for emerging international voices. Un Certain Regard opens with Jane Schoenbrun’s slasher film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and closes with Laetitia Masson’s Ulysse. The Critics’ Week opens for the first time in its history with an animated feature: In Waves by Phuong Mai Nguyen. The Directors’ Fortnight opens with Kantemir Balagov’s Butterfly Jam and closes with Quentin Dupieux’s animated debut Vertiginous. The proliferation of animation across the parallel sections marks a notable shift in the festival’s selection priorities.

The political and industry frame

Frémaux noted at the lineup announcement on 9 April that 2,541 feature films were submitted for consideration this year — a record. He also signalled the broader industry context: studios are producing fewer blockbusters and fewer auteur films than in the past, leaving festivals like Cannes dependent on the films themselves rather than on a steady studio pipeline. Festival President Iris Knobloch framed the political moment in her opening remarks: when the world loses its bearings, showing films from all corners of the globe is not a trivial gesture but a defence of humanity’s freedom of thought. The 79th Cannes Film Festival, in short, arrives at a moment when European cinema’s claim on global cultural attention has rarely felt more politically charged.