2026 Cannes Winners + Oscar Submission Speculation

by Nathaniel R

FJORD wins the coveted Palme d'Or. Will Oscars nominations follow for Cristian Mungiu, Renate Reinsve, and Sebastian Stan? ?

Will the 2026 Cannes Festival have lasting impact on this cinematic year? With the oft-reported absence of major Hollywood outings at the 79th festival, the best we might hope for (for those of us on the other side of the ocean) is a similar or muted echo to last year when the four non-English features that dominated the Cannes conversation (It Was Just An Accident, Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, Sirāt) proved to have incredible staying power, wowing audiences from their May 2025 premieres all the way through the culmination of awards season on Oscar night in March of 2026. Not all of the award-winning films from a year ago held strong the whole film year, of course; Sound of Falling, The President's Cake, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, award-winning in May, struggled to make a big impact several months later with quieter distribution and media reactions.  Now that the 2026 edition of the festival has wrapped Fjord, Fatherland, The Black Ball, Minotaur, A Man of His Time, All of a Sudden, and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, as well as all of the non-winning films will now face the broader audience endurance test as they make their way through international markets. Will we see any of the 2026 Cannes titles in the mix come Oscar season, still building large devout fanbases? Not every film that wins big at Cannes "plays" elsewhere and some which come up empty-handed on the Croisette become awards players in other contexts (like Oscar or equivalent awards in their home countries).

The winners from the 79th Annual Cannes Film Festival and some commentary after the jump... 

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Cannes at Home: A Polarizing Pandemonium

by Cláudio Alves

Adèle Exarchopoulos won a César for Jeanne Herry's ALL YOUR FACES. Will her new collaboration with the director, presently at Cannes, produce similar results?

The 2026 Cannes Film Festival is drawing to a close, so I should probably hurry up with this corresponding Cannes at Home program. In the past few days, a number of titles have come and gone on the Croisette, most of them eliciting wildly divisive reactions. Nobody seems to agree on the merits of Na Hong-jin’s Hope, and Arthur Harari’s The Unknown has proven similarly polarizing. While some bet on Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord for the Palme, others are decrying it as a minor work, if not an outright failure. Elisa is a fan, for instance, but TFE’s old friend Nick Davis is a naysayer. In the middle of all this, László Némes’ historical Moulin and Jeanne Herry’s Garance have mostly slipped by under the radar, drawing little attention while also sparing themselves the lacerating putdowns their bolder, more ambitious competition has inspired in film critics and audiences alike.

For this lightning round of Cannes at Home, let’s run this gamut of filmmakers in capsule form. Their films are Nemes’ handsome Sunset, Herry’s actorly All Your Faces, Na’s go-for-broke bonkers The Wailing, Harari’s portrait of Onoda, and Mungiu’s first foray into the intolerance that can emerge in European communities beset by the arrival of outsiders, R.M.N...

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Cannes: "Fjord" brings Cristian Mungiu back to the moral gray zone

by Elisa Giudici

FJORD from Cristian Mungiu

Cristian Mungiu has built an entire career around moral instability, yet Fjord feels particularly thorny. The Romanian filmmaker’s latest Cannes Competition entry begins as a family drama rooted in a real-life custody case before gradually revealing itself as something much larger and far more uncomfortable: a film about the impossibility of reconciling competing moral systems inside supposedly enlightened societies. The Palme d’Or-winning filmmaker has turned  a real-life custody case into a sprawling and deeply unsettling drama about multiculturalism, religion, and the limits of liberal tolerance.

Fjord reunites A Different Man stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as a  Romanian father and his Norwegian wife (a deeply religious Catholic missionary)...

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Cannes at Home: Day 5 – A Tale of Two Victors

by Cláudio Alves

The fourth day of Main Competition screenings saw the premiere of two films by former Palme d'Or winners. First up, Swedish auteur Ruben Östlund returned to the Croisette after taking the festival's top honor with The Square. Triangle of Sadness is the director's first film since then, perchance indicating a newfound obsession with geometrical titling. Reactions have skewed positive, though there are dissenting voices. Then, it was time for Cristian Mungiu to present R.M.N, this year's first major Palme contender as far as critical reception is concerned (Elisa's review). It should be noted that this is the fourth time Mungiu has presented a film in the Main Competition – all three previous projects won prizes, setting a good precedent for the Romanian master. 

Logically, when discussing these laurelled artists, the mind drifts to their victorious flicks. Today's Cannes at Home selections are The Square and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days…

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Cannes Diary #5: Genies, Spies, Influencers, and Xenophobia

by Elisa Giudici

Sometimes I wish people who plan the daily schedule of festivals would love their audiences more. Placing a Cristian Mungiu movie at the end of very long day of screenings is a challenge. Even the most hardy of festivalgoers might have trouble. Why not use a more energetic movie for the 10 PM slot like Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness? Sorry for whining a little, but sometimes the real struggle is to give every movie the right chance to shine. Revising titles after seeing them at festivals throughout the years, I've noticed that late night spots sometimes result in harsher reviews than the film deserved.

After the jump three main competition films plus the buzzy Three Thousand Years of Longing from George Miller starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton... 

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