Is 2026 Sandra Hüller’s year?

by Cláudio Alves

PROJECT HAIL MARY, Chris Lord & Phil Miller | © Amazon MGM Studios

One of the most widely loved and acclaimed films in the first half of 2026 has been Project Hail Mary. Personally, I didn’t fall head over heels for Lord and Miller’s Andrew Weir adaptation, though one element did earn some adoration. After all, how can you not love Sandra Hüller doing her damnedest to add dimension and dynamism to her scenes, elevating what could have been an exposition machine into the picture’s most arresting presence? The moment when she belts out Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times” in a most fatalistic going-away party is enough to justify the admission price. Give this German thespian a mic and a pop tune, and you’ll get instant movie magic. Toni Erdmann fans remember!

Honestly, 2026 is shaping up to be Sandra Hüller’s year, even more than 2023 already was. With that in mind, consider some Berlinale musings, Cannes news, and Venice speculation, after the jump…

REQUIEM, Hans-Christian Schmid | © IFC Films

Back in the 2000s, possession movies were all the rage, from such openly mercenary endeavors as those Exorcist prequels to the cheeky subversion of Jennifer’s Body. To no one’s surprise, Hollywood was all too willing to capitalize on real-life stories, twisting historical cases of religious psychosis and misunderstood mental health issues into schlock where shock value was prioritized. The case of Anneliese Michel, a German young woman who died from malnutrition in 1976 after dozens upon dozens of exorcisms, became The Exorcism of Emily Rose, an American retelling that posited that she was actually victimized by demons rather than a victim of parental and medical negligence.

Less than a year after that mess arrived in theaters, another film based on Michel’s troublesome death premiered in competition at Berlin. Unlike its Hollywood sibling, Requiem makes no move towards sensationalization, nor does it take a stand on whether the supernatural was involved. Indeed, the deadly exorcisms aren’t even depicted on screen. Instead, director Hans-Christian Schmid approaches the subject with purposeful disaffection, employing the aesthetics of social realism to propose a sort of factual objectivism. That’s not to say the film is distant, nor that it rejects fiction altogether. Indeed, in an attempt to distance itself from the actual events, names and other details are changed.

In the end, it makes for a powerful character study that dignifies its subject by allowing for ambiguity, preserving the mystery of faith and the uncertainty of psychological conjecture. Such a project makes monumental demands of its performers, so it might be surprising to realize Schmid chose a relative big screen novice for the lead. Up till then, Sandra Hüller had only acted on stage and some short films, making Requiem her feature debut. And what a debut it was. Pardon the hyperbole, but what Hüller achieves is on par with Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves or James Dean in East of Eden as far as the best first feature performances in film history go. 

It’s not just a matter of performing epileptic seizures or potential madness, but the whole business of an oscillating sense of self, gradations of rebellion and self-destruction, the common fury of youth, and the blush of nascent desires, euphoria curdling into anger, and a surge of serenity when you least expect it. For her efforts, Hüller won the Silver Bear for Best Actress. Her career would continue to flourish, though it would take a while for the international mainstream to catch wind of her talent. Now, she’s an Oscar-nominated thespian with multiple Best Picture contenders in her filmography, Hollywood projects under her belt, the respect of peers all over the world, and cinephile devotees as far as the eye can see.

ROSE, Markus Schleinzer | © MUBI

So, there’s some poetry to the fact that, 20 years after that first Silver Bear, Sandra Hüller won another. Markus Schleinzer’s Rose tells the story of a woman who, in 17th-century Europe, poses as a male soldier to claim an inheritance with the actress in the crossdressing lead role. Since Berlin, Rose has been picked up by MUBI and is expected to have a worldwide release later this year. For most actors, appearing in the Main Competition of one of the big three European film festivals is major enough. But Hüller goes further, as her first film with Polish auteur Paweł Pawlikowski has just been announced as part of the selection for the 79th Cannes Film Festival.

In Fatherland, also known as 1949, Hüller will play Erika Mann, daughter of famed German author Thomas Mann. Set amid the desolation of postwar Germany, this Cold War tale is said to be a sort of road-trip movie, following a father and daughter as they return from exile and travel across the divided nation. And if that wasn’t enough, a month after this Cannes premiere, Hüller will appear in German cinemas as Ingeborg Bachmann in a snapshot of the writer’s life put to screen by director Regina Schilling. It’ll be a very literary summer for an actress who’s already starred in projects like a Martin Amis adaptation and a Heinrich von Kleist biography earlier in her career.

Wait, there’s more. Because there’s another Sandra Hüller film on the horizon, and this one might take her to Venice. The Italian festival is certainly accustomed to Alejandro González Iñárritu's cinematic stylings, having programmed him four times before, including for Birdman and Bardo. Could Digger follow suit? Sadly, I don’t have much to tell you about this enigmatic production, as not a lot has been revealed. We know it’s a comedy of catastrophic proportions, with Tom Cruise as its main star, and its synopsis reads: “The most powerful man in the world races to prove he is humanity's savior before the disaster he unleashed destroys everything.” Where does Hüller fit in all this? No clue, but she’s sure to be dazzling. I

FATHERLAND, Pawel Pawlikowski | © MUBI

Are you as enthused about Sandra Hüller’s 2026 output as I am? Which of these projects most whets your film-loving appetite? Oh, and have you seen Project Hail Mary already? What did you think? Sound off in the comments.