The 2026 Cannes Film Festival is over, and the Palme d’Or has been awarded to Fjord by Cristian Mungiu, featuring Sebastian Stan, in a balanced awards slate.
It’s always with a blend of relief and melancholy that the Cannes festivities come to an end. No more coffee IVs and energy drinks between two queues, no more late-night article drafting (note-taking helps) and no more sleep-deprived hours. On the other hand, the intellectual and emotional stimulation of Cannes remains like no other experience, and it reminds us with every newly unearthed gem of the privilege of mapping the near future of world cinema.
Nevertheless, we must admit that this 79th edition felt a touch disappointing, especially when compared with an exceptional 2025 edition. If the side programs again shone by highlighting promising young filmmakers and sharp, brilliant works (The Corset, Gabin, La Gradiva…), the more anticipated auteurs didn’t necessarily deliver their most inspired efforts (wasn’t it Almodóvar or Farhadi?).
Led by the brilliant South Korean director Park Chan-wook (Old Boy, No Other Choice), this year’s jury was composed of Demi Moore, Ruth Negga, Chloé Zhao, Laura Wandel, Diego Céspedes, Isaach de Bankolé, Paul Laverty and Stellan Skarsgård, and faced the heavy task of delivering its awards list, with for the Palme d’Or Fjord by Cristian Mungiu.
A Lovely Awards Lineup
This awards lineup, for once, had the virtue of coherence. Or perhaps it mirrors the films selected, many of which tackle questions of groups, communities in crisis or fractured. Awarding Fjord is also a nod to a work that plays with the culture wars and their paradoxes, staging an ambiguity that dares to juxtapose what one might label as the “conservatives” and the “progressives.” It marks for the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu his second Palme after the 2007 win for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.
If we admit we might have missed the Jury Prize The Dreamed Adventure (a feminist ramble across the border region between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey), the Grand Prix for Andreï Zviaguintsev’s Minotaur was a clear choice. During his speech, the Russian filmmaker—whose film contemplates the everyday consequences of the war in Ukraine—addressed Vladimir Putin: “Millions of people on both sides of the contact line are waiting for one thing, for the massacre to end. And the only person who can put an end to this carnage is the president of the Russian Federation. End this carnage, the world is watching.”
Acting prizes chose not solo performances but duos, pairing up cinematic magic: Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne for Coward, and Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto for Suddenly. This seems to be the edition’s guiding motto: a love of teamwork, which even led Virginie Efira to call Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s film “the shoot where I felt the most sense of community.”
Another pairing in direction, which honored two approaches that are at once complementary and distinct: La Bola Negra, the emphatic Spanish film marked by its time-bending structure, and Fatherland, the new jewel showcasing Paweł Pawlikowski’s sober virtuosity. The Polish director had already won the same prize in 2018 for Cold War, but this collaboration with Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo signals a cinema aimed at the painful reconstruction of nations after wars, where the silence of generations scarred by trauma keeps the wound wide open.
We also see this same theme echoed in the Golden Camera (the prize awarded to a first feature), which highlighted Ben’imana, a moving work about the late arrival of people’s courts in Rwanda in the wake of the 1994 genocide.
The surprise of the awards lay more with the screenplay prize, awarded to Emmanuel Marre for his wonderful Our Salvation. A surprise because Marre largely encouraged his actors to improvise the situations he imagined for this film with an almost documentary approach (and very thoroughly documented). He also drew inspiration from the correspondence between his great-grandfather and great-grandmother, an epistolary foundation for this modern piece about petty fonctionnaires of the Vichy era, ultimately very close to us.
The recap of this 79th edition’s awards:
Palme d’Or: Fjord by Cristian Mungiu
Grand Prix: Minotaur by Andreï Zviaguintsev
Prix du Jury: The Dreamed Adventure by Valeska Grisebach
Prix d’interprétation féminine: Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto for Suddenly by Ryūsuke Hamaguchi
Prix d’interprétation masculine: Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne for Coward by Lukas Dhont
Prix du scénario: Emmanuel Marre for Our Salvation
Prix de la mise en scène: La Bola Negra by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo ex aequo with Fatherland by Paweł Pawlikowski
Caméra d’or: Ben’imana by Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo
Palme d’or du court-métrage: Para Los Contrincantes (To the Opponents) by Federico Luis
