Cannes shuns Hollywood: The 10 films you should know about

Robbie CollinTue, May 12, 2026 at 8:42 AM UTC

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‘Cannes has an enduring soft-spot for John Travolta’: Propeller One-Way Night Coach is adapted from the actor’s 1997 children’s novel

“When the studios are less present in Cannes, they are less present full stop,” sniffed festival director Thierry Frémaux when he announced the first tranche of the 2026 programme. It stood as a pre-emptive rebuke to those of us left perplexed by the line-up – which is unusually light on splashy Hollywood fare (there’s no equivalent of Mission: Impossible, Top Gun: Maverick or Elvis), with a bigger focus on arthouse fare.

As the 78th edition of the festival kicks off, which films should you flock to once they are released in cinemas? Here are my 10 tips.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Hannah Einbender (left) plays a trendy young film-maker who becomes obsessed with casting a reclusive actress played by Gillian Anderson

Few film titles are more “you’re either in or you’re out” than the one belonging to this enticingly arch-sounding slasher from American Jane Schoenbrun, whose 2024 breakout hit I Saw The TV Glow was a well of profound psychological unease. It stars Hannah Einbender as a trendy young film-maker who is asked to revive a hoary old Eighties slasher franchise, and becomes obsessed with casting the now-reclusive actress (Gillian Anderson) who played the first instalment’s lone teenage survivor. A good omen: Patrick Fischler, a totemic weirdo in Mulholland Drive and Under the Silver Lake, makes an appearance in an as-yet-undisclosed supporting role.

Propeller One-Way Night Coach

To non-plane-spotters the title might sound like an avant-garde jumble, but in fact this is an old-fashioned family adventure film written and directed by John Travolta, adapted from his 1997 children’s novel about a young boy making a life-changing flight to Hollywood in the golden age of aviation. Perhaps thanks to Pulp Fiction, which won the Palme d’Or back in the day, Cannes has an enduring soft spot for Travolta. The actor’s daughter, Ella Bleu, plays a flight attendant in the film, while the smart money says Travolta himself will be in the cockpit.

Paper Tiger

Miles Teller, Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson play the Pearl family in Paper Tiger - DR

Paper Tiger is perhaps the starriest proposition on this year’s line-up. Cannes habitué James Gray (Ad Astra, The Immigrant) returns to the festival for the sixth time with a gritty period crime thriller led by Scarlett Johansson about two brothers (Adam Driver and Miles Teller) chasing the American Dream in 1980s New York.

Full Phil

Woody Harrelson plays an American business magnate who journeys to Paris with his daughter, played by Kristen Stewart

There may be no more purely funny film-maker working today than France’s Quentin Dupieux, and his first foray into English-language cinema will hopefully introduce his work to a wider international crowd. Full Phil stars Woody Harrelson as an American business magnate, Philip Doom, who journeys to Paris with his daughter (Kristen Stewart), only for the pair’s trip to be derailed by what Dupieux fans can reasonably anticipate will be a string of variously banal and surreal mishaps.

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Her Private Hell

The few clues dropped by the film’s director so far point towards a revenge thriller of sorts set in Tokyo

It’s been 10 years since Danish provocateur Nicolas Winding Refn last brought a feature to Cannes, though the Drive director’s latest sounds as if we may have needed a decade to steel ourselves for it. The few clues dropped by Refn so far point towards a revenge thriller of sorts set in Tokyo, though the fact that it has been programmed in an out-of-competition slot suggests the festival may believe it’s a controversy magnet (they did the same thing with the unspeakably nasty The House that Jack Built, by Refn’s fellow Dane Lars von Trier, in 2018.) Refn has described it as “groovy”, which could mean anything. The cast is led by Sophie Thatcher of Yellowjackets fame.

Bitter Christmas

Leonardo Sbaraglia plays a feted director trying to get over writer’s block

Spain’s Pedro Almodóvar turns inward for what sounds like a lightly autobiographical tragicomedy about a feted director (Leonardo Sbaraglia) who squirms past his creative block by writing the story of another film-maker (Bárbara Lennie), this one taking a break from the ad world, who in turn ends up raiding her friends’ tumultuous private lives for inspiration. A Cannes regular for most of his 52-year career, Almodóvar has remarkably yet to win a Palme d’Or; this year’s jury president, Park Chan-wook, and his yet-to-be-announced comrades may seize on this – if it’s any good – as a chance to set that right.

Fjord

Sebastian Stan (back, right) and Renate Reinsve (centre) play a Romanian-Norwegian couple who move to a remote coastal village - Neon

This Norway-set refugee drama has breakout arthouse hit written all over it. Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve co-star as a Romanian-Norwegian couple who relocate to a remote coastal village and become objects of suspicion among its longer-term inhabitants. The director is Romanian Cristian Mungiu, whose harrowing abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days won the Palme d’Or in 2007.

John Lennon: The Last Interview

The documentary is built around a radio interview given by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in December 1980 - Vinnie Zuffante/Getty

Cannes loves a juicy music documentary, and this one from Steven Soderbergh sounds especially succulent. It’s built around a radio interview given by John Lennon and Yoko Ono on December 8 1980 to RKO Radio in New York, just 12 hours before the ex-Beatle was shot. Controversially, its archival photographs and newsreel footage are interspersed with around 10 minutes of AI-generated imagery, which Soderbergh has claimed will serve as a surreal visualisation of Lennon and Ono’s more abstract conversational gambits. Will it prompt Cannes’s famously obstreperous audiences to boo? We’ll see.

Diamond

Andy Garcia directs and acts in his noir-themed passion project - IMDB

In lieu of any big new studio movies at this year’s festival, here’s something that resembles a big old one. Andy Garcia has been chipping away for years at this noir-themed passion project, about a haunted Los Angeleno, played by Garcia, who uses his uncanny knack for amateur private investigation to solve crimes and (per his creator) “peel back hidden truths”. The impressively hefty cast includes Brendan Fraser, Bill Murray, Dustin Hoffman, Danny Huston, Robert Patrick and Vicky Krieps; the festival is, no doubt, hoping for as full a red carpet turnout as possible.

The Man I Love

There may be just one American film in this year’s competition – so far, anyway – but it sounds like the dictionary definition of a big swing. The latest project from Ira Sachs (Love is Strange, Passages) is a musical fantasia set amid the 1980s New York Aids crisis, starring Rami Malek, Rebecca Hall, Tom Sturridge and The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach. Malek’s character is a Downtown artist called Jimmy George, and while we don’t yet know what sort of songs the Bohemian Rhapsody star will be singing, the title strongly hints that George and Ira Gershwin will be in the mix.

Cannes Film Festival runs from May 12 until May 23

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”