Cannes 79e Edition Opens 12 May: Park Chan-wook Becomes First South Korean Jury President as Demi Moore, Chloe Zhao and Stellan Skarsgard Judge a 22-Film Slate Strongly International in Tone

The 79th Cannes Film Festival opens on Tuesday 12 May 2026 on the French Riviera and runs through Saturday 23 May, with awards announced at the closing ceremony broadcast live by France Télévisions. For the first time in the festival’s history, the main competition jury is presided by a South Korean filmmaker — Park Chan-wook, the director of Oldboy, The Handmaiden, Decision to Leave, and his most recent feature No Other Choice. Park is the first Asian filmmaker to head the Cannes jury since Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-wai in 2006, and his appointment was announced by festival organisers in Paris in late February.

The 22-film competition slate

This year’s In Competition programme spans 22 films from a roster of returning Cannes auteurs and a small clutch of festival debutants. Confirmed competition entries include works by Pedro Almodóvar (Spain), Hirokazu Kore-eda (Japan), Asghar Farhadi (Iran), James Gray (United States), Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Japan), Cristian Mungiu (Romania), Na Hong-jin (South Korea), László Nemes (Hungary), Marie Kreutzer (Austria), Paweł Pawlikowski (Poland), Léa Mysius (France) and Ira Sachs (United States). The slate is, as Variety noted in early May, “strongly international” and notably “light on US fare.” Last year’s Palme d’Or went to Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi‘s It Was Just an Accident, judged by Juliette Binoche’s jury.

The jury: a heavyweight nine

Park Chan-wook will be flanked by a jury of eight high-profile international names, revealed by festival organisers in early May. The line-up includes:

• Demi Moore (US actress) — returning to Cannes after her widely-praised 2024 turn in Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, which won Best Screenplay and earned her Golden Globe, SAG and Critics Choice wins along with BAFTA and Oscar nominations.
• Stellan Skarsgård (Swedish actor) — fresh from his Oscar-nominated supporting performance in Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, which won the 2025 Cannes Grand Prix.
• Chloé Zhao (Chinese-American writer-director) — Best Picture and Best Director Oscar winner for Nomadland (2021), coming off her Oscar-nominated Hamnet.
• Ruth Negga (Irish-Ethiopian actress and producer)
• Isaach De Bankolé (Ivorian-American actor)
• Laura Wandel (Belgian writer-director, of Playground)
• Diego Céspedes (Chilean writer-director, who won the 2025 Un Certain Regard Prize for The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo)
• Paul Laverty (Scottish screenwriter, the long-time Ken Loach collaborator behind two Palmes d’Or — The Wind That Shakes the Barley and I, Daniel Blake)

Opening night: La Vénus électrique

The festival opens out of competition with the world premiere of Pierre Salvadori‘s La Vénus électrique (English title: The Electric Kiss), a 1920s period piece. Among the high-profile additions to the wider programme is the directorial debut of John Travolta — Propeller One-Way Night Coach, screening out of competition in the Cannes Premiere section. Other notable non-competitive entries include Steven Soderbergh‘s documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview, and Ron Howard‘s Avedon. Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur and Pawel Pawlikowski’s 1949 are among the most anticipated competition titles.

Park’s record at the Croisette

The festival’s homage to its jury president is unusually substantial. Park’s relationship with Cannes began with the 2004 Grand Prix for Oldboy — a result that helped trigger the global wave of interest in Korean cinema that culminated in Bong Joon-ho‘s 2019 Palme d’Or for Parasite, the only Korean film to date to win the top prize. Park subsequently won the 2009 Jury Prize for Thirst, returned in competition with The Handmaiden in 2016, and won Best Director for Decision to Leave in 2022. Festival President Iris Knobloch and Artistic Director Thierry Frémaux, who unveiled the programme in Paris, framed Park’s appointment as recognition that “Park Chan-wook’s inventiveness, visual mastery, and penchant for capturing the multiple impulses of women and men with strange destinies have given contemporary cinema some truly memorable moments.”

The 25th anniversary screening

Among the special programme additions is a 25th anniversary screening of The Fast and the Furious, marking the original 2001 release. The festival has also confirmed a slate of upcoming special events around its centenary planning, with the 80th edition in 2027 expected to coincide with festival-wide celebrations. Hartland Villa designed the official 2026 poster, featuring actresses chosen to symbolise the festival’s enduring relationship with the female lead — a deliberate counter-programming choice in a year when American films are notably underrepresented in the main competition.

Why this year matters beyond the cinephile world

For the European cultural and creative-industries policy community, Cannes 2026 carries political subtext. The European Commission’s AgoraEU programme and the EU work plan for culture for 2027-2030, both currently in legislative process, will be discussed at the Cannes Film Market. The Cypriot Presidency-led informal meeting of EU culture, audiovisual, media and sport ministers in early May 2026 placed cultural sovereignty and the international competitiveness of European cinema at the top of the agenda. Park Chan-wook’s first South Korean jury presidency is, in this context, a quiet but pointed signal: the festival is positioning itself as a global rather than a Eurocentric event, even as the Commission tightens its industrial policy around European audiovisual production. The closing ceremony on 23 May will distribute the Palme d’Or, the Grand Prix, the Jury Prize, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress, and the Camera d’Or for first feature.