CANNES 2026The Awards
- Serge Leterrier
- 17 hours ago
- 4 min read
CANNES 2026
The Awards
The Choice of Vertigo
By Serge Leterrier
The awards of this 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival reveal a very clear direction. Films shaped by tension, memory, instability and human fractures. This year, Park Chan-wook’s jury favored works that move through uncertainty rather than comfort.
The official winners of Cannes 2026 have now been announced, and the selection outlines a strong artistic vision. Under the presidency of Park Chan-wook, the jury appears to have privileged films built around inner tension, emotional imbalance and the instability of the contemporary world.
The Palme d’Or awarded to Fjord by Cristian Mungiu immediately sets the tone. For years, the Romanian filmmaker has explored dense human material shaped by guilt, memory and the weight of social systems. With this award, Cannes confirms a strong attraction toward morally confrontational cinema.
This selection does not seek reassurance. It highlights films that disturb, narratives that unsettle certainties, and directing choices that demand full attention from the audience. The recognition of Minotaur among the festival’s most acclaimed works reinforces this feeling. Andrei Zvyagintsev’s film confronts power, inner collapse and collective violence with striking intensity.
Even the most intimate films presented this year carry an underlying tension. Paweł Pawlikowski with Fatherland, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi with Suddenly, and Kore-eda with Sheep in the Box all explore a similar idea — a world moving through permanent instability, where characters search for balance more than resolution.
What stands out most in this year’s awards is the importance given to time. Very few films relied on immediate impact or spectacular demonstration. Many unfolded slowly. Many required the audience to enter a denser, more interior rhythm. Cannes 2026 seems to have rewarded this artistic demand.
Park Chan-wook’s jury appears remarkably coherent in that regard. His own cinema has always explored moral tension, emotional ambiguity and unstable boundaries between desire, violence and guilt. This year’s awards almost feel like a cartography of those obsessions.
Inside the theaters, these choices divided festivalgoers throughout the week. Some expected stronger emotional immediacy or more spectacular filmmaking. Others saw in this selection the return of a more demanding cinema, less dependent on instant reactions and media acceleration.
This edition also leaves another impression — that of a Festival looking at the world with concern. War, memory, identity, transmission, solitude and political or economic domination run through many of the awarded works. Cannes 2026 gives the feeling of a cinema still searching for its place in an unstable era.
The contrast with the official Thelma & Louise poster becomes particularly interesting. The image suggested movement, freedom and open roads, while the awards themselves speak far more about inner confinement, fracture and vertigo.
And yet, a coherence emerges. All these films portray characters who continue moving forward despite everything. Individuals still searching for direction in the middle of disorder.
This year’s awards therefore avoid reassurance. They affirm cinema as a space of tension, thought and human confrontation. A strong artistic line, sometimes austere, yet deeply coherent with this 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival.
THE AWARDS
PALME D’OR
Fjord — Cristian Mungiu
GRAND PRIX
Minotaur — Andrei Zvyagintsev
JURY PRIZE
The Dreamed Adventure — Valeska Grisebach
BEST SCREENPLAY
Our Salvation — Emmanuel Marre
BEST ACTRESS
Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto in Suddenly by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
BEST ACTOR
Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne in Coward by Lukas Dhont
BEST DIRECTING
La bola negra — Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo
SPECIAL MENTION
Fatherland — Paweł Pawlikowski
CAMÉRA D’OR
Ben’imana — Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo
SHORT FILM PALME D’OR
To the Opponents — Federico Luis
FOCUS
The Best Actress award given to Virginie Efira takes on a particular dimension this year through its shared recognition alongside Tao Okamoto. Two very different presences, two sensitivities, two ways of inhabiting the screen, united by the same inner intensity. While Virginie Efira works through restraint, density and emotional control, Tao Okamoto brings a more instinctive, almost suspended presence shaped by the precision of gaze and silence. This ex aequo decision reflects an interesting vision of acting embraced by the Cannes 2026 jury. A feminine performance that moves beyond demonstration in favor of nuance, inner tension and authenticity of presence.
The shared Best Actor award between Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne for Coward by Lukas Dhont perfectly extends the spirit of this 2026 awards selection. The jury recognizes here a performance built through connection, fragility and emotional tension carried by two actors together. Emmanuel Macchia develops a contained, deeply interior intensity, while Valentin Campagne brings a more instinctive and nervous presence driven by immediate sensitivity. Together, they create a relationship that becomes the true emotional center of the film. Lukas Dhont films their looks, silences and hesitations with remarkable intimacy. This shared award celebrates not only two actors, but also a way of allowing emotion to circulate naturally between bodies, without demonstration, with profoundly human truth.
This 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival ultimately leaves the image of a cinema moving through the tension of the world while continuing, film after film, to search for a deeply human truth.
