I really tried to see and write about more than 23 films at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, but with filing (I could be a faster writer) and a need to walk around and eat the occasional meal, 23 was all I could manage. This is all I ever seem to manage at 10-day festivals.
I decided against seeing Club Kid, and am completely at peace with this. I’m sorry I missed the 4K restored-footage version of The Devils, but it’ll play theatrically in the fall. I didn’t see La Bola Negra or I Saw Buildings Fall Like Lightning so fuck me.
Due to an absence of passion I didn’t write about five of the 23 — Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet A Woman’s Life, Radu Jude‘s The Diary of a Chambermaid, Diego Luna‘s Ashes (Ceniza en la Boca), Marie Kreutzer‘s Gentle Monster and Jean Herry‘s Garance.
I wrote next to nothing about Emmanuel Marre‘s Notre Salut, a mystifyingly draining and generally empty film.
Repeating: The keepers were, in this order, Fjord, Fatherland, The Man I Love, Paper Tiger, The Beloved, The Match, Maverick, Dernsie and (in my estimation at least) Parallel Tales. Nine in all.
I saw nothing yesterday (Friday, 5.22) due to having to write a thorough, thoughtful, carefully phrased pan of Coward, which upset me greatly, and then compose another freelance piece (a Cannes sum-up) for the New York Sun.
Caught, bagged and tagged: (1) The Electric Kiss (d: Pierre Salvadori); Butterfly Jam (d: Kantemir Balagov); (3) The Match (d: Juan Cabral, Santiago Franco); 4. A Woman’s Life (d: Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet); 5. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (d: Jane Schoenbrun); 6. Ashes or Ceniza en la Boca (d: Diego Luna), 7. Fatherland (d: Paweł Pawlikowski…actually saw it twice); 8. Parallel Tales (d: Asghar Farhadi); 9. The Diary of a Chambermaid (d: Radu Jude); 10. All of a Sudden (Sudain) (d: Ryusuke Hamaguchi), 11. John Lennon: The Last Interview (d: Steven Soderbergh), 12. Gentle Monster (d: Marie Kreutzer), 13. The Beloved (El Ser Querido) (d: Rodrigo Sorogoyen), 14. Paper Tiger (d: James Gray); 15. Garance (d: Jean Herry); 16. Maverick: The Epic Adventures of David Lean (d: Barnaby Thompson); 17. Moulin (d: Laszlo Nemes); 18. Fjord (d: Cristian Mungiu); 19. Minotaur (d: Andrey Zvagintsev); 20. Notre Salut (d: Emmanuel Marre); 21. Dernsie: The Amazing Life of Bruce Dern (d: Mike Mendez); 22. The Man I Love (d: Ira Sachs); 23. Coward (d: Lukas Dhont).