{"id":238,"date":"2026-05-28T04:14:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T04:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238"},"modified":"2026-05-28T04:14:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T04:14:22","slug":"all-the-films-in-competition-at-cannes-2026-ranked-from-best-to-worst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238","title":{"rendered":"All the Films in Competition at Cannes 2026, Ranked from Best to Worst"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Last year\u2019s Cannes Film Festival competition was the strongest in recent memory. I remember it, perhaps a touch rosily, as an almost ceaseless parade of triumphs: this was where we caught our first glimpse of \u201cSir\u0101t,\u201d \u201cSound of Falling,\u201d \u201cThe Secret Agent,\u201d \u201cResurrection,\u201d \u201cThe Mastermind,\u201d and \u201cIt Was Just an Accident,\u201d the eventual winner of the top prize, the Palme d\u2019Or. The extraordinary strength of that lineup seems even more pronounced following the conclusion of a 2026 festival that, by consensus and by comparison, was a bit of a disappointment\u2014not without its good and even great films, though with many head-scratchers in between.<\/p>\n

Read more Everlane and the Death of the \u201cGood\u201d Millennial Life-Style Brand<\/a><\/p>\n

The jury, led by the South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook, nonetheless found plenty to like. On Saturday, they awarded the Palme d\u2019Or to \u201cFjord,\u201d a complex, critically divisive social drama from the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu that takes place in a remote Norwegian town. It marked the filmmaker\u2019s first time working outside his home country, and predominantly in a different language\u2014also the case for another entry in the competition, the Japanese director Ry\u00fbsuke Hamaguchi\u2019s \u201cAll of a Sudden,\u201d which is set mostly in Paris. That isn\u2019t the only example of two selections seeming to speak to each other. The experience of watching so many movies over a twelve-day period coaxes your brain into a heightened state of pattern recognition, and you might begin to wonder if certain films have been programmed based on narrative and thematic similarities. There are two films, \u201cCoward\u201d and \u201cThe Black Ball,\u201d which focus on the experiences of gay male soldiers during wartime. Two films, \u201cA Man of His Time\u201d and \u201cMoulin,\u201d immerse us in the mind-set of a Frenchman during the German Occupation. Two films, \u201cThe Unknown\u201d and \u201cGentle Monster,\u201d star the French actress L\u00e9a Seydoux\u2014which is reason enough to see at least one of them. And two films, \u201cBitter Christmas\u201d and \u201cParallel Tales,\u201d interrogate the ethics of artistic inspiration.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

These points of connection, so pronounced to many of us who were on the ground at the festival, will largely vanish once the individual movies find their way into cinemas and onto streaming platforms. My own estimation of the movies will almost certainly have shifted, too, which means that the list that follows\u2014a personal ranking of all twenty-two films in competition, from best to worst\u2014will have to be considered a provisional exercise. But it\u2019s also an assignment that I\u2019ve found rewarding in recent years, as a means of assessing a festival that, even in an off year, knows how to put on a pretty good show.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

1. \u201cAll of a Sudden\u201d<\/h2>\n

Ry\u00fbsuke Hamaguchi should have two Palmes by now, one for his exquisite Haruki Murakami adaptation, \u201cDrive My Car\u201d (2021), and another for this quietly astonishing new work. Like the earlier film, \u201cAll of a Sudden\u201d ponders the imponderables of life and death and runs in the vicinity of three hours, but also moves along as lightly and wondrously as a dream. Set in and around a Parisian elder-care home, whose internal workings and staff tensions are explored with an observational rigor worthy of the late Frederick Wiseman, it hinges on a chance encounter between two women\u2014played by Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto, who rightly shared the festival\u2019s Best Actress prize\u2014whose bond feels at once divinely orchestrated and utterly spontaneous. Hamaguchi joins \u00c9ric Rohmer, Richard Linklater, and Hong Sangsoo in the pantheon of directors who know the dramatic rhythm and transformative power of conversation; he\u2019s made the rare movie that can take a dry-erase-board lecture, or a playful interaction with finger puppets, and make you feel as if you\u2019re watching two souls converge.<\/p>\n

2. \u201cPaper Tiger\u201d<\/h2>\n

Like \u201cLittle Odessa\u201d (1994), \u201cWe Own the Night\u201d (2007), and \u201cArmageddon Time\u201d (2022) before it, this supremely engrossing drama finds the director and screenwriter James Gray reshuffling elements from his family history. It\u2019s a tale of two brothers, Gary (Adam Driver) and Irwin (Miles Teller), angling for a business deal with the Russian mob in 1986 New York\u2014a foolish decision, born of hubris, na\u00efvet\u00e9, and greed, that Gray spins into a breath-sapping thriller and, by the end, an overwhelming tragedy. Driver and Teller tease out a rich spectrum of sibling emotions; as Irwin\u2019s distraught yet determined wife, Hester, Scarlett Johansson gives a piercing performance. Gray, one of our last great American traditionalists, has also become a particularly resourceful memoirist, though what\u2019s onscreen never feels like a retread. If he remains transfixed by his own past, his gaze seems to have grown only clearer, more penetrating, and more intensely sorrowful with time.<\/p>\n

3. \u201cMinotaur\u201d<\/h2>\n

Why revisit Claude Chabrol\u2019s \u201cLa Femme Infid\u00e8le\u201d (1969), which was already adapted in the U.S., as \u201cUnfaithful\u201d (2002), by Adrian Lyne? Andrey Zvyagintsev, one of the most gifted Russian filmmakers of his generation, answers the question so decisively as to quell any knee-jerk remake fatigue. As in his earlier works \u201cLeviathan\u201d (2014) and \u201cLoveless\u201d (2017), he expands a study of a troubled marriage into something larger and vastly more unsettling. By grounding the material in Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia, not long after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he suffuses a tale of upper-class adultery and murder with a white-hot political fury. True to its title, \u201cMinotaur\u201d traps us in the lair of a monster\u2014here, a cuckolded businessman, outstandingly played by Dmitriy Mazurov\u2014who demands human sacrifice, supplied, in this case, by the employees he is tasked with sending off to war. The result, which won the festival\u2019s second-place Grand Prix, is a perfectly chilled portrait of a world that draws no distinction between crimes of passion and acts of totalitarian complicity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

4. \u201cThe Unknown\u201d<\/h2>\n

A man named David (Niels Schneider) sleeps with a woman, Eva (L\u00e9a Seydoux), and later finds, to his horror, that his consciousness is now inhabiting her body. He concludes that Eva must now be trapped in his<\/em> body, but no; David\u2019s physical form has become a vessel for someone else\u2019s consciousness entirely. The notion of rampant soul travel as a kind of sexually transmitted contagion distinguishes \u201cThe Unknown\u201d from past comedies of corporeal exchange, to the point of confusion for some; Cannes audiences were split right down the middle. But I was moved and ultimately captivated by the director Arthur Harari\u2019s insistence on treating the loss of identity as grist for tragedy rather than farce, and taken with his leap into uncharted terrain (especially after co-writing the 2023 Palme winner, \u201cAnatomy of a Fall\u201d). He also pulls off perhaps the single most squirmingly funny and mind-bending scene of the competition\u2014one that redefines the notion of autoeroticism, and which sees Schneider\u2019s and Seydoux\u2019s performances rise to interchangeable levels of greatness.<\/p>\n

5. \u201cThe Dreamed Adventure\u201d<\/h2>\n

Early on in this enveloping neo-noir, which won the festival\u2019s third-place Prix du Jury, the German director Valeska Grisebach pulls off a remarkable feat of narrative transference: Said (Syuleyman Alilov Letifov), a poker-faced man of mystery who\u2019s recently arrived in a small Bulgarian border town, turns out not<\/em> to be the film\u2019s protagonist. In the first of several droll surprises, he gets swapped out for the suggestively named Veska (an outstanding Yana Radeva), an archeologist who, with sharp wits and dogged curiosity, proceeds to excavate a vast and sprawling network of criminality. Like Grisebach\u2019s previous Cannes entry, \u201cWestern\u201d (2018), \u201cThe Dreamed Adventure\u201d refuses shortcuts, resists predictability, and moves with a raggedy authenticity that belies its precise construction; it enacts a prismatic conversation between the textures of realism and the codes of genre until both layers seem to fuse, miraculously, into one.<\/p>\n

6. \u201cA Man of His Time\u201d<\/h2>\n

Live in such a way that your descendants won\u2019t one day make a movie about your inexorable, soul-killing descent into moral oblivion. The French writer and director Emmanuel Marre deservedly won the festival\u2019s screenplay prize for this rigorous, unsparing portrait of his great-grandfather, Henri Marre (a brilliant Swann Arlaud), whom we meet in Vichy in 1940, desperately trying to advance his own interests under the collaborationist regime. The camera locks Henri in its sights, catching his every empty boast and complicit deed as Hitler\u2019s Final Solution looms, and offering nary a shred of redemption or reassurance. But Marre\u2019s ironically titled movie also deploys several anachronistic flourishes\u2014nondescript interiors, contemporary needle drops\u2014to throw our own everyday capitulations to authoritarianism into discomfiting relief.<\/p>\n

7. \u201cFatherland\u201d<\/h2>\n

Crystalline images in boxy black-and-white frames. A whiff of cigarette smoke and postwar malaise. Yes, it\u2019s a new film from the Polish director Pawe\u0142 Pawlikowski, and one that, along with his earlier \u201cIda\u201d (2014) and \u201cCold War\u201d (2018), forms a bleak-chic trilogy of European soul-searching. In the 1949-set \u201cFatherland,\u201d the exiled novelist Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra H\u00fcller) embark on an unhappy road trip through Germany, a broken and divided homeland that they have been called on to help rehabilitate. Pawlikowski\u2019s filmmaking\u2014which earned him Best Director, the same prize he won for \u201cCold War\u201d\u2014is a marvel of wry concision, sometimes to the point of feeling undernourished. But he and his superb actors leave us with a melancholy understanding of the venality of artists, which can complicate, but never overpower, the sublimity of art.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

8. \u201cBitter Christmas\u201d<\/h2>\n

Then there are artists who evince a different kind of amorality: feeding like parasites on the lives of their friends and acquaintances, crafting stories that become insidious distortions of the truth, and offering them to us without apology. The Spanish master and perpetual Cannes-competition bridesmaid Pedro Almod\u00f3var has mined this terrain several times before, in confessional dramas such as \u201cBad Education\u201d (2004) and \u201cPain and Glory\u201d (2019). In \u201cBitter Christmas,\u201d he once more indicts his own vulturism, this time through an onscreen alter ego, Ra\u00fal (Leonardo Sbaraglia), whose latest project takes intricate shape before our eyes. Almod\u00f3var nests one story inside another, leaps between them with breathtaking fluidity, and brings them both to a virtuosic, if abrupt, finish. What lingers, and what he seems to understand and dramatize better than any filmmaker now working, is how an act of creation can also be an act of destruction, claiming the closest relationships as its greatest casualties. \u201cBitter\u201d really is the operative word.<\/p>\n

9. \u201cThe Beloved\u201d<\/h2>\n

A revered but inactive director, intent on a comeback, reaches out to his actress daughter after years of estrangement, hoping to cast her in a significant role. If that sounds like the setup for last year\u2019s much acclaimed \u201cSentimental Value,\u201d \u201cThe Beloved,\u201d from the Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen, is less a copy than a corrective; it\u2019s the relentlessly honest, messily full-bodied movie that \u201cSentimental Value\u201d refused to be. Here, rather than getting waved aside in a feel-good haze, the unresolved tensions between father and daughter come into blistering focus; the emotional mechanics, superbly embodied by Victoria Luengo and Javier Bardem (who gives his strongest performance in years), become one with the nuts and bolts of the filmmaking process. We\u2019re often force-fed bromides about how art and life can nourish each other; it\u2019s bracing to be reminded that they can poison each other, too.<\/p>\n

10. \u201cNagi Notes\u201d<\/h2>\n

I don\u2019t have any naggy notes for this moving drama set in the remote Japanese town of Nagi. It\u2019s a haven, albeit one that\u2019s changing in ways not always visible to the casual observer; the director Koji Fukada means to grant us a more intimate view. Nagi is a farming village, a locus of military activity, and a place still largely in thrall to patriarchal dynamics. But in Fukada\u2019s gently corrective vision, it\u2019s also a home for dreamers, a place where two teen-age boys can fall passionately in love, and two former sisters-in-law\u2014one a Tokyo-based architect (Shizuka Ishibashi), the other a local artist (Takako Matsu)\u2014can forge a friendship on their own terms, beyond family ties.<\/p>\n

Read more What the Pope Said About A.I.<\/a><\/p>\n

11. \u201cFjord\u201d<\/h2>\n

Cristian Mungiu\u2019s gripping ensemble drama awed some critics and alienated others with its tale of a conservative Christian couple (a starkly deglamorized Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve) who, shortly after moving from Romania to Norway, are accused by social services of physically abusing their children. More than a few wondered if the director, whose Romanian-set films have forcefully criticized religious fundamentalism, had suddenly moved rightward as his camera drifted west. My sense is that he was simply adapting to his surroundings; Mungiu brings to each new environment an inherent skepticism of the local powers that be. He also brings his usual meticulously choreographed long takes and multi-character structure, conducting, as in his superior \u201cR.M.N.\u201d (2023), a sociological X-ray of a close-knit community. Impressively executed as it is, that sweep doesn\u2019t always serve his purposes. If anything, it\u2019s Mungiu\u2019s pose of omniscience that opens him up to charges of stacking the deck\u2014or even of playing God\u2014in a movie that holds its own beliefs close to the vest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

12. \u201cCoward\u201d<\/h2>\n

After winning awards and generating controversy at Cannes for \u201cGirl\u201d (2019) and \u201cClose\u201d (2023), two queer coming-of-age dramas that veer between exquisite sensitivity and near-exploitative cruelty, the Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont returned this year with his third and strongest feature, set during the First World War. Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne shared the jury\u2019s Best Actor prize for their skillfully harmonized performances as a pair of soldiers who participate in a military theatre troupe; as entertainers, they\u2019re not only granted some respite from the trenches but also allowed to push against the norms of gender expression via drag. Dhont expertly handles the tension between the homosocial and the homoerotic, and if his honey-toned visual style sometimes leans toward fussiness, it\u2019s counterbalanced by the brutality of the combat sequences. Mercifully, he avoids his usual lurch into tragedy; war, he figures rightly, is terrible enough.<\/p>\n

13. \u201cHope\u201d<\/h2>\n

The movie that struck its detractors as the competition\u2019s most incongruous entry was, for the rest of us, precisely what the race needed: a jolt of pure, unfiltered blockbuster adrenaline, courtesy of a South Korean horror maestro, Na Hong-jin, whose blood-soaked action-thrillers have accounted for some of my happiest Cannes memories. \u201cHope,\u201d a riotous mashup of thrillingly staged and daringly attenuated chase scenes, mordant small-town comedy, and delightfully craptacular C.G.I., isn\u2019t as fully realized a nightmare as some of Na\u2019s earlier triumphs, such as \u201cThe Yellow Sea\u201d (2011) and \u201cThe Wailing\u201d (2016). Nor am I prepared to defend the coda, which makes a bewildering swerve into alien-species lore, all to lay the groundwork for a sequel that I doubt the world needs. For now, though, the world does need \u201cHope.\u201d<\/p>\n

14. \u201cAnother Day\u201d<\/h2>\n

I didn\u2019t know beforehand that this modest, winning comedy-drama, written and directed by the French filmmaker Jeanne Herry, was an addiction story. What\u2019s refreshing about \u201cAnother Day\u201d is that it doesn\u2019t really seem to know it, either; it deftly sidesteps a minefield of rehab and relapse clich\u00e9s, sees its protagonist whole, and doesn\u2019t treat any one of her problems as definitive. Garance (wonderfully played by Ad\u00e8le Exarchopoulos) is a talented, struggling actress who, over the course of the movie, endures the COVID<\/em>-19 pandemic, falls in love with another woman, gets fired from her job, supports her younger sister through a serious illness, and, along the way, downs enough glasses of wine to put her at serious risk of liver failure. \u201cAnother Day\u201d\u00a0\u2019 s jittery rhythms add meaning to its English title: every moment is fleeting and, like this movie, worth savoring for what it is.<\/p>\n

15. \u201cA Woman\u2019s Life\u201d<\/h2>\n

The two-time C\u00e9sar winner L\u00e9a Drucker is overdue for a Best Actress win at Cannes; her lead performances in \u201cLast Summer\u201d (2023) and \u201cCase 137\u201d (2025) were among the strongest to grace the festival competition in recent years. She\u2019s in typically memorable form here as Gabrielle, a middle-aged maxillofacial surgeon who\u2014like Garance in \u201cAnother Day,\u201d the competition\u2019s other French femme-centric slice of life\u2014exists in a continual state of upheaval: staff turmoil in an already high-stress job, frustrations with her husband and stepchildren, and an unexpected new love (M\u00e9lanie Thierry). The director Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet tries to bring texture and grit to a romantic-dramedy tradition known for its gloss and sentimentality; the occasional surgery scenes, though unlikely to faze anyone who\u2019s binged \u201cThe Pitt,\u201d succeed in doing so. I\u2019m less enamored of the decision to compartmentalize the story into a series of chapters, each one with a self-consciously aphoristic title.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

16. \u201cThe Man I Love\u201d<\/h2>\n

After the tempestuous romantic triangle of \u201cPassages\u201d (2023) and the exquisitely ruminative chamber piece \u201cPeter Hujar\u2019s Day\u201d (2025), the American director Ira Sachs completes a decade-hopping trilogy of reckonings with gay artists with this moody portrait of late-nineteen-eighties New York. Rami Malek stars as Jimmy, a stage performer who, after being hospitalized for AIDS<\/em>-related illnesses, tries to get his career back on track with an ambitious new piece, inspired by Andr\u00e9 Brassard\u2019s film \u201cOnce Upon a Time in the East\u201d (itself a 1974 Cannes competition entry). Mostly, though, Jimmy exists to frustrate and magnetize the men who love him; Tom Sturridge is especially, achingly good as his devoted partner and caretaker. With subtle brilliance, Sachs evokes the tones and textures of his milieu and makes inventive use of music: the George Gershwin song of the title, a recurring French ditty from the Brassard film. What\u2019s missing, though, is a center worthy of the frame. Malek is an actor of lithe physicality\u2014his body language in the dance scenes has a witty expressiveness\u2014but he never conjures a sense of Jimmy\u2019s inner life. Seldom has his emotional range felt more glaringly inadequate.<\/p>\n

17. \u201cMoulin\u201d<\/h2>\n

In this bleaker-than-bleak thriller about Jean Moulin (Gilles Lellouche), the martyred leader of the French Resistance\u2014a natural companion to \u201cA Man of His Time,\u201d with its indictment of French nonresistance\u2014the Hungarian director L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Nemes pays principled tribute to wartime heroism by refusing to glorify or glamorize it. Deploying the sinuous visual style of his earlier films, \u201cSon of Saul\u201d (2015) and \u201cSunset\u201d (2019), albeit in a more noirish register, he charts Moulin\u2019s capture, interrogation, torture, and murder with an intensity of focus worthy of a passion play. The filmmaking is classically handsome, and Lellouche\u2019s resemblance to Lino Ventura\u2014the star of Jean-Pierre Melville\u2019s 1969 French Resistance masterpiece, \u201cArmy of Shadows\u201d\u2014is crucial to the power of his performance. But the picture also feels stolid and one note. Nemes doesn\u2019t have much talent for modulation, which may be why Lars Eidinger\u2019s leering, Colonel Hans Landa-esque performance as Klaus Barbie, Moulin\u2019s sadistic captor, threw me out of the movie more often than it sucked me in.<\/p>\n

18. \u201cGentle Monster\u201d<\/h2>\n

In the lesser of her two competition films, L\u00e9a Seydoux plays another character navigating the unknown\u2014an avant-garde musician, Lucy, whose life is upended when her husband, Philip (Laurence Rupp), is arrested for possession and distribution of child pornography. The Austrian director Marie Kreutzer is working queasily close to the bone here: Florian Teichtmeister, one of the actors in her period drama \u201cCorsage\u201d (2022), was charged with child-pornography possession shortly after the film\u2019s release. She has a strong collaborator in Seydoux, who expertly navigates Lucy\u2019s fluctuations between worry and denial as she weighs the future of her marriage and the grim possibility that Philip may have abused their young son. But Kreutzer\u2019s handling of the material proves far less assured. An overextended subplot centered on the home life of an investigating police officer (Jella Haase) makes the thuddingly reductive argument that we\u2019re all enabling the monsters in our lives, gentle and otherwise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

19. \u201cThe Black Ball\u201d<\/h2>\n

The weakest of the three Spanish-directed films in the competition was the only one to win a prize. Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, known to their many international fans as Los Javis, shared the Best Director award\u2014with each other, and with \u201cFatherland\u201d\u00a0\u2019s Pawlikowski\u2014for this swollen, convulsively plotted epic about three gay men living, respectively, in the years 1932, 1937, and 2017. The trio are connected through the whims of fate, the bonds of blood, the power of art (Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca looms large), the horrors of war, and, mostly, the magic of overediting. There\u2019s an undeniable political purpose to the film\u2019s unfettered, two-and-a-half-hour-plus maximalism: Calvo and Ambrossi bring a forthright sensuality to the central drama of a Spanish Civil War soldier (played by the singer Guitarricadelafuente) who falls for a leftist captive, and their desire to pay homage to an earlier queer triptych, \u201cThe Hours\u201d (2002), couldn\u2019t be plainer. But none of the stories here feels potent or stirring enough on its own to work in tandem with the others, and neither a terrific pop-up appearance by Pen\u00e9lope Cruz nor a daft one by Glenn Close can keep so much frenzied crosscutting from reaching the point of diminishing returns.<\/p>\n

20. \u201cParallel Tales\u201d<\/h2>\n

In 2022, The New Yorker<\/em>\u2019s Rachel Aviv investigated allegations of plagiarism and intellectual-property theft that had dogged the Iranian director Asghar Farhadi over his drama \u201cA Hero,\u201d which won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2022. Four years later, Farhadi has returned with the most rudderless film of his career, and one in which he seems bent on trolling the audience: \u201cParallel Tales\u201d not only borrows from (and credits) the sixth episode of Krzysztof Kie\u015blowski\u2019s \u201cDekalog\u201d (1989) but also showcases literary larceny as a prominent plot device. The film\u2019s worst crime might be its wasting of the great Isabelle Huppert, cast here as a Parisian novelist writing tortured romantic fiction about a trio of sound engineers (Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, and Pierre Niney) who work in an apartment across the street. Farhadi\u2019s better movies, which include an earlier Paris-set drama, \u201cThe Past\u201d (2013), are models of airtight construction; here, he loosens up a typically elaborate plot with humor and whimsy, and the result is all mannered meta-nonsense. As an inquiry into the ethics of mining truth for fiction, it makes Almod\u00f3var\u2019s \u201cBitter Christmas\u201d look even more incisive.<\/p>\n

21. \u201cSheep in the Box\u201d<\/h2>\n

The Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda is a beloved mainstay of the Cannes competition; he won the Palme d\u2019Or in 2018 for \u201cShoplifters,\u201d one of his best films, and won nothing this year for \u201cSheep in the Box,\u201d one of his worst. Ostensibly wired for our moment of A.I. anxieties, the film\u2014about a bereaved couple, Otone (Haruka Ayase) and Kensuke (Daigo Yamamoto), who are gifted a humanoid facsimile of their late son, Kakeru (Rimu Kuwaki)\u2014instead feels dated from the jump, not least because it takes such obvious inspiration from Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201cA.I. Artificial Intelligence\u201d (2001). Kore-eda has generated Spielberg comparisons before, given his facility with child actors, his affinity for dramas about broken families, and his ability to walk a tightrope between sentimentality and restraint. But his instincts fail him continually in a dull, emotionally anesthetized story that surges to life only in the presence of Otone\u2019s combative mother-in-law (Kimiko Yo), who seems rightly skeptical of Kakeru 2.0. Her wonderfully human frowns aside, Kore-eda\u2019s restraint has rarely felt more robotic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

22. \u201cThe Birthday Party\u201d<\/h2>\n

I don\u2019t know if the French director L\u00e9a Mysius\u2019s home-invasion thriller is the worst film in this year\u2019s competition, but for its nearly two-hour duration, it struck me as by far the biggest waste of time. Hafsia Herzi plays Nora, a successful government worker living in a beautiful house in a marshy stretch of French countryside, with a dependable husband, an annoying daughter, and Monica Bellucci for a neighbor. The remoteness of their surroundings is no accident; one of these characters is fleeing an inconvenient past, which returns with a vengeance in the form of a beefy sadist (Beno\u00eet Magimel) and his two hostage-taking henchmen. \u201cThe Birthday Party\u201d is adapted from a novel by Laurent Mauvignier, and I had heard it described beforehand as a genre exercise in the vein of Michael Haneke\u2019s \u201cFunny Games.\u201d But there\u2019s nothing shocking or subversive about this movie, which plays like proficient, forgettable straight-to-streaming fare for the first ninety minutes and then botches its big, bloody finale. I\u2019ve admired Mysius\u2019s work as a co-screenwriter on such features as \u201cParis, 13th District\u201d (2021) and \u201cStars at Noon\u201d (2022). \u201cThe Birthday Party\u201d isn\u2019t good, but I wish Mysius many happier returns to Cannes in the future.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more Our Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It wasn\u2019t a banner year for the world\u2019s most important film festival, but there were gems among the twenty-two films contending for the Palme d\u2019Or, Justin Chang writes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-current-cinema"],"yoast_head":"\nAll the Films in Competition at Cannes 2026, Ranked from Best to Worst - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"All the Films in Competition at Cannes 2026, Ranked from Best to Worst - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It wasn\u2019t a banner year for the world\u2019s most important film festival, but there were gems among the twenty-two films contending for the Palme d\u2019Or, Justin Chang writes.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-05-28T04:14:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"20 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=238#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=238\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\"},\"headline\":\"All the Films in Competition at Cannes 2026, Ranked from Best to Worst\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-05-28T04:14:22+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=238\"},\"wordCount\":4101,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=238#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/9b02e9cdd93dab1e6b54e307a5baf0ca.gif\",\"articleSection\":[\"The Current Cinema\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=238#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=238\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=238\",\"name\":\"All the Films in Competition at Cannes 2026, Ranked from Best to Worst - City Relocation News\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=238#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=238#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/9b02e9cdd93dab1e6b54e307a5baf0ca.gif\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-05-28T04:14:22+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=238#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=238\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=238#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/9b02e9cdd93dab1e6b54e307a5baf0ca.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/9b02e9cdd93dab1e6b54e307a5baf0ca.gif\",\"width\":1280,\"height\":720},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=238#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"All the Films in Competition at Cannes 2026, Ranked from Best to Worst\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/\",\"name\":\"City Relocation News\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\",\"name\":\"admin\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"admin\"},\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?author=1\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"All the Films in Competition at Cannes 2026, Ranked from Best to Worst - City Relocation News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"All the Films in Competition at Cannes 2026, Ranked from Best to Worst - City Relocation News","og_description":"It wasn\u2019t a banner year for the world\u2019s most important film festival, but there were gems among the twenty-two films contending for the Palme d\u2019Or, Justin Chang writes.","og_url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238","og_site_name":"City Relocation News","article_published_time":"2026-05-28T04:14:22+00:00","author":"admin","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"admin","Est. reading time":"20 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238"},"author":{"name":"admin","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4"},"headline":"All the Films in Competition at Cannes 2026, Ranked from Best to Worst","datePublished":"2026-05-28T04:14:22+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238"},"wordCount":4101,"commentCount":0,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/9b02e9cdd93dab1e6b54e307a5baf0ca.gif","articleSection":["The Current Cinema"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238","url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238","name":"All the Films in Competition at Cannes 2026, Ranked from Best to Worst - City Relocation News","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/9b02e9cdd93dab1e6b54e307a5baf0ca.gif","datePublished":"2026-05-28T04:14:22+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/9b02e9cdd93dab1e6b54e307a5baf0ca.gif","contentUrl":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/9b02e9cdd93dab1e6b54e307a5baf0ca.gif","width":1280,"height":720},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=238#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"All the Films in Competition at Cannes 2026, Ranked from Best to Worst"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/","name":"City Relocation News","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4","name":"admin","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"admin"},"sameAs":["http:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com"],"url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?author=1"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}