Directors’ Fortnight has unveiled a selection for its 58th edition that features several documentary and animation features, and blends first-time filmmakers with established auteurs including Clio Barnard, Quentin Dupieux, Alain Cavalier, Radu Jude and Lisandro Alonso.
Scroll down for full list of titles
Artistic director Julien Rejl revealed the lineup at a press conference in Paris on Tuesday (April 14) for the Cannes parallel section, which is run by France’s directors’ guild, SRF.
There are 19 features in the selection, all of them world premieres except Once Upon A Time In Harlem, which debuted at Sundance and is one of three documentaries in the lineup.
The Cannes parallel section will kick off with Russian director Kantemir Balagov’s English-language title Butterfly Jam, which stars Barry Keoghan, Riley Keough and Harry Melling, and is set in a tight-knit US community of Circassian immigrants. It will mark Balagov’s third time in Cannes after his previous two features played in Un Certain Regard – Tesnota in 2017 and Beanpole in 2019.
Directors’ Fortnight will close with Quentin Dupieux’s animated film Le Vertige, produced by Hugo Selignac’s Chi-Fou-Mi. No details have been revealed about the under-the-radar project, which Rejl described as “unclassifiable”. The prolific filmmaker will be doing double duty at the festival this year with his English-language film Full Phil in the official selection.
Animation and documentary take centre stage
Le Vertige is joined by two other animated features in the selection, We Are Aliens and Viva Carmen, and Rejl told Screen he and his selection committee had been “actively looking for films in the documentary and animation genres”.
As well as Once Upon A Time In Harlem, which Neon snapped up following its Sundance premiere and centres on a 1972 gathering at Duke Ellington’s New York house of luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance, the other documentaries are Gabin, the first doc feature from Maxence Voiseux about a rebellious 13-year-old boy in rural northern France, and Thanks For Coming (Merci D’Etre Venu) by 94-year-old French filmmaker Alain Cavalier.
“Alain considers it to be his last film, so it will really be an event,” Rejl said. Cavalier has been at the festival many times over the past several decades, including with Pater in official Competition in 2011.
In animation, rising Japanese filmmaker Kohei Kadowaki brings his debut feature, We Are Aliens, which follows two friends across more than three decades as time passes and their lives diverge.
Sébastien Laudenbach, who co-directed Chicken For Linda!, will premiere Viva Carmen (Carmen, L’Oiseau Rebelle) about a gang of street kids in Seville who brave danger to protect a free-spirited, flamboyant young woman.
Politics with a twist
Among more politically-charged titles, Rejl cites Lisandro Alonso, who revisits his debut 2001 feature La Libertad with Double Freedom (La Libertad Doble) to show how Argentina has changed some 25 years later.
Clio Barnard’s UK title I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, follows five childhood friends who have now hit 30 and are faced with the realities of their lives. The buzzy UK and Irish cast includes Anthony Boyle, Joe Cole, Jay Lycurgo, Daryl McCormack and Lola Petticrew.
Jorge Thielen Armand’s Death Has No Master is described by Rejl as “a thriller that also shows the violence and social injustice in Venezuela today”.
Other films with political undertones include Golden Bear winner Radu Jude’s latest project, Diary Of A Chambermaid, about a young Romanian woman working for a French family who joins an amateur theatre company.
Nigerian twin directing duo Arie and Chuko Esiri’s Clarissa is a modern reimagining of Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway set in Lagos, where the titular society woman prepares to host a party at her home and encounters once-intimate friends from her youth. The film, which stars Sophie Okonedo, David Oyelowo, India Amarteifio, Ayo Edebiri and Toheeb Jimoh, has already been scooped up by Neon for US theatrical release and international sales.
From the US, Reed Van Dyk brings his first feature, Atonement, starring Kenneth Branagh, Hiam Abbas and Boyd Holbrook, a feature adaptation of a 2012 New Yorker article about a Marine who seeks to reconcile with the survivors of an Iraqi family victimised by his unit years earlier.
“We tried to find films that aren’t heavy. Even if they depict violence or the realities of the world as it is, they spark emotion and imagination, or they are a little bit quirky. Cinema should have a role in not just showing what is happening in the world, but to transform it and bring voices of hope from artists,” said Rejl.
Full range of filmmakers
The section’s further debut features include Norwegian filmmaker Eivind Landsvik’s Low Expectations, about an artist on a journey of self-discovery after her career takes a turn for the worse, and Sarah Arnold’s Too Many Beasts starring Alexis Manenti and Ella Rumpf, about a police officer pushed to the brink of insanity while investigating a murder in the French countryside.
France’s Lila Pinell brings her second film Shana, produced by Charles Gillibert’s CG Cinema and Ecce Films, about a young girl who inherits a ring from her late grandmother meant to ward off bad luck as her misfortunes pile up.
Asian films are well-represented. South Korean filmmaker July Jung will bring Dora about a young girl who finds healing from physical and mental illness. Jung’s A Girl At My Door played in Un Certain Regard in 2014.
Thai filmmaker Sompot Chidgasornpongse brings his debut fiction feature 9 Temples To Heaven, about a family who come together when their matriarch falls ill to visit several temples in an attempt to accumulate good karma to prolong her life. Palme d’Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul is among the producers.
Chilean filmmaker Dominga Sotomayor brings La Perra about a solitary middle-aged woman with a painful past who rescues an abandoned puppy.
Rejl said his selection team received a record 1,800 feature films this year, but added that in terms of quality, “It is clear that it is getting harder and harder to produce films today”.
Despite the fraught economic and geopolitical context, he sums up the selection as intentionally heterogeneous: “None of the films are alike. We have really composed a selection of films that are all so completely different from each other.”
Directors’ Fortnight runs May 13-23.
Directors’ Fortnight 2026 features lineup
*first film
9 Temples To Heaven
Dir. Sompot Chidgasornpongse
Atonement*
Dir. Reed Van Dyk
Butterfly Jam – opening film
Dir. Kantemir Balagov
Clarissa
Dirs. Arie Esiri, Chuko Esiri
Death Has No Master
Dir. Jorge Thielen Armand
Diary Of A Chambermaid
Dir. Radu Jude
Dora
Dir. July Jung
Double Freedom
Dir. Lisandro Alonso
Gabin*
Dir. Maxence Voiseux
I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning
Dir. Clio Barnard
La Perra
Dir. Dominga Sotomayor
Le Vertige – closing film
Dir. Quentin Dupieux
Low Expectations*
Dir. Eivind Landsvik
Once Upon A Time In Harlem
Dir. William Greaves & David Greaves
Shana
Dir. Lila Pinell
Thanks For Coming
Dir. Alain Cavalier
Too Many Beasts*
Dir. Sarah Arnold
Viva Carmen
Dir. Sébastien Laudenbach
We Are Aliens*
Dir. Kohei Kadowaki
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