Cannes Movie Competition 2026: 5 takeaways: AI and queer cinema

Cannes normally gives a minimum of one full-throttle Hollywood second. Final yr, Tom Cruise introduced Mission: Inconceivable – The Ultimate Judgment on the Palais, the identical place the place he made his debut High Gun: Maverick in 2022. This yr, Hollywood stayed at residence, with filmmakers like Christopher Nolan (The Odyssey) and Steven Spielberg (Disclosure day) preferring to fly over the Croisette. There was not a single studio movie on this well-known crimson carpet.

It was telling that the most important crowd on the competition’s crimson carpet was for a 25-year-old Common motion franchise. The midnight anniversary screening of The Quick and the Livid sparked large cheers each exterior the Palace and contained in the theater, in a celebration that even introduced Vin Diesel to tears. It was an emotional second, but in addition overwhelming for a competition that had to return 1 / 4 of a century to seek out its Hollywood second.

The the explanation why the majors stayed residence are a number of. Cannes is dear, the critics could be cruel and field workplace success for a competition premiere is rarely assured. (The Cannes launch of Mission: Inconceivable 8 does not appear to have helped a lot when the movie lastly hit theaters). Warner Bros.’ success final yr with One battle after one other And Sinners — two Oscar-winning blockbusters that skipped the competition circuit — means that Cannes wants the studios greater than the studios want Cannes.

LGBTQ+ cinema dominated Cannes this yr. The competition’s largest and hottest movies targeted on queer characters, themes, or views.

In competitors, that of Ira Sachs The person I really likestarring Rami Malek as a homosexual artist navigating the AIDS disaster in Eighties New York, obtained a 10-minute ovation and speak of an awards race for the Oscar-winning movie. Bohemian Rhapsody star.

Lukas Dhont, the Belgian filmmaker behind Woman And Shutreceived over most critics – however not The Hollywood ReporterDavid Rooney — with Cowardhis World Warfare I drama about queer love within the burrows. Then there was Javis – the Spanish director duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi – whose The black ball introduced collectively three generations of queer males by way of the Spanish Civil Warfare and past, receiving the competition’s longest standing ovation (a reported 20 minutes) and overwhelming vital reward.

Out of competitors, Jane Schoenbrun’s queer slasher Teenage Intercourse and Demise at Camp Miasma opened Un Sure Regard and Jordan Firstman’s Kids’s Membershipa comedy that appears like an Adam Sandler film with medicine and dolls, was the most popular ticket of the competition.

Ask anybody from the primary week and the Market was like a wake. Ask them in the previous few days and the temper has modified significantly. After a gradual opening week that left many sellers looking at their telephones, the Cannes Movie Market discovered a second wind in its remaining days, with a wave of high-profile acquisitions injecting much-needed power into what had been a cautious and defensive market.

The deal that set the tone got here early: Jordan Firstman’s Cannes escape Kids’s Membership bought to A24 after a heated bidding conflict, with the impartial distributor shelling out $17 million for worldwide rights to the surprisingly candy (and virtually family-friendly) comedy set within the homosexual membership scene.

Then got here the late push.

Netflix has chosen an animated function movie Within the wavesand, as of this writing, is near securing home rights to the competition favourite The black ball (The black ball) with Penélope Cruz and Glenn Shut, and the title Léa Seydoux Mild monster. Each really feel like rewards for the streamer. Warner Bros.’ nascent specialty label Clockworks, which introduced a restored model of Ken Russell’s 1971 traditional The Devils screened at Cannes Classics, is in talks to take Park Chan-wook’s movie Rattlecreek Banditsa revenge western written by Bone Tomahawk author/director S. Craig Zahler and can star Matthew McConaughey, Austin Butler, Pedro Pascal and Tang Wei for North America. If it closes, it will be an necessary assertion of intent for the brand new WB division.

It could not have been a stellar yr when it comes to deal quantity, however there was a way of high quality over amount and, in the long run, encouraging indicators of inexperienced shoots for the impartial movie business.

The largest drama of Cannes 2026 came about off-screen and concerned an escalating civil conflict between French movie business professionals and the nation’s main studio, Canal+.

On the eve of the competition, some 600 French cinema professionals, together with Juliette Binoche, Adèle Haenel and Swann Arlaud, signed an open letter to protest towards Vincent Bolloré, right-wing media mogul and largest shareholder of Canal+. The letter minced no phrases, calling Bolloré’s increasing French media empire – it’s already a number one power in movie and tv manufacturing and, by way of Canal+, plans to purchase UGC, the nation’s third-largest cinema operator – a “fascist takeover of the collective creativeness”.

The anti-Bolloré petition gained momentum after Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada, talking in Cannes, mentioned he would blacklist the signatories. Hundreds of individuals signed their names to the open letter, together with worldwide stars like Javier Bardem, Mark Ruffalo, Yorgos Lanthimos and Ken Loach.

By the top of the competition, greater than 3,500 names have been on the petition. France’s largest union representing leisure staff introduced it will take authorized motion towards Canal+ over the specter of blacklisting Saada. The viewers on the Cannes screenings clearly expressed their emotions by loudly booing the Canal+ and Studiocanal logos each time they appeared on the massive display screen.

With French elections subsequent yr and the far-right Nationwide Rally get together anticipated to run for president, this French cinematic drama is way from reaching its climax.

A humanoid robotic seen parading on the Croisette appears to sum up the movie business’s worst fears on the subject of AI: the machines have arrived and they’re taking your house. However contained in the Palace and below the market tents, the dialog about synthetic intelligence has moved past worry and into extra of an uneasy acceptance.

Preventing AI “is a battle we will lose,” Demi Moore, a member of this yr’s Cannes jury, mentioned on the competition’s opening press convention, suggesting the movie business must “discover methods to work with it.”

This isn’t the official Cannes line. The competition has banned movies utilizing generative synthetic intelligence from its programming. However on the Cannes movie market and in discussions at business occasions over the previous two weeks, the tone has modified.

AI-friendly tech large Meta has signed on as an official competition companion in a multi-year deal. Its AI instruments have been used to assist produce a [out of competition] entry to the competition: the documentary by Steven Soderbergh John Lennon: the final interview. On the Marché du Movie, an “AI for Expertise Summit” took the AI ​​revolution as a given, focusing as an alternative on the moral use of AI, knowledge sovereignty, and the way the expertise can be utilized to reinforce, reasonably than exchange, creativity.

For the impartial movie business, this was a turning level.