The 2026 Cannes Film Festival officially launches today, drawing the eyes of all film fans to the glamorous French Riviera and the cinematic jewels premiering there.

Long considered the soft launch for next year’s awards season, the cream of the industry crop jostle to have their movie debut on the Croisette.

While this year is lighter on Hollywood fare than some previous editions, there’s still plenty of A-List talent involved, from Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver to Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Rami Malek and Sebastian Stan.

Exciting international filmmakers are generating plenty of buzz too with long-time Cannes favourites like Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn and Ad Astra and The Lost City of Z director James Gray returning, while Pulp Fiction superstar John Travolta is making his directorial debut.

Sprinkling further magic on proceedings are this year’s honorary Palme d’Or recipients, Lord of the Rigs filmmaker Peter Jackson and genuine Hollywood icon Barbra Streisand.

Ahead are my picks as a critic for the films to be most intrigued by, from slasher horror to fraught family drama and one or two genuinely mysterious – or at least hard to imagine – offerings…

Paper Tiger

The film in the main competition line-up with perhaps the heaviest Hollywood cast, Paper Tiger stars Adam Driver, Miles Teller and Scarlett Johansson.

Written and directed by James Gray, this crime drama sees two brothers in pursuit of the American Dream become entangled in a scheme that’s too good to be true – and with the Russian mafia – fraying their familial bonds.

Somewhat of a festival darling, five of Gray’s films have previously competed for the Palme D’Or, including 2022’s Armageddon Time and 2013’s The Immigrant.

Not much else is known about Paper Tiger, as is pretty commonplace at Cannes, making for plenty of juicy sight unseen screenings of what could become the biggest films of the year.

As a particular fan of Gray’s 2019 film Ad Astra with Brad Pitt, I am quietly optimistic.

Her Private Hell

Another Cannes favourite, writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn returns with his first feature film in a decade following 2016’s art-house horror The Neon Demon with Elle Fanning.

Her Private Hell is a Tokyo-based thriller-horror, set in a future where a mysterious mist engulfs the city, ‘unleashing a deadly and elusive entity’.

A troubled young woman (Companion’s Sophie Thatcher) sets out to search for her father while an American GI (Beef’s Charles Melton) goes on ‘a harrowing odyssey to rescue his daughter from Hell’, the official synopsis teases.

As the filmmaker awarded with Canne’s director prize for Drive in 2011, Refn has made a career out of bold, stylish and unique films.

So far, distributor Neon has simply described it as ‘something groovy’… and I’m fascinated. It feels like event cinema at Cannes, with even more buzz than the return of Julia Ducournau last year.

Propeller One-Way Night Coach

As well as un unwieldy title, Propeller One-Way Night Coach is a curious proposition: it’s John Travolta’s directorial debut, based on a children’s book he wrote in 1997.

Acting in it – and narrating too – this 61-minute movie is clearly a passion project for an A-List star known to be obsessed with aviation (and a qualified pilot).

It’s also a family affair, with his daughter Ella Bleu Travolta co-starring.

Set in the golden age of flying, the film follows a young plane enthusiast Jeff (newcomer Clark Shotwell) and his mother (Kelly Eviston-Quinnett) as they set off on a magical one-way cross country journey to Hollywood.

Travolta’s career has been languishing near (if not in) the bargain bin in recent years (alongside stepping back since his wife Kelly’s death in 2020), so the unexpectedly snappy trailer and Apple TV’s money behind the project has made me feel more hopeful of a quality comeback for him.

Hope

Hope is rather a mysterious prospect so far, although it co-stars husband and wife acting duo Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander for the first time since they met making 2016’s The Light Between Oceans, alongside a largerly South Korean cast.

From writer-director Na Hong-jin, the film is set in a remote village near the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) where the community is thrown into chaos after a tiger sighting is reported.

But as things start hurtling into the unknown, with communications cut off, it builds ‘through human conflict into a tragedy of cosmic proportions’.

Marketed as a sci-fi thriller, Hope feels like it will be an all-encompassing movie in terms of genre, experience and emotion. There’s lots of excitement about this one.

The Man I Love

American indie filmmaker Ira Sachs is delivering what’s reported to be a musical fantasy film, starring Rami Malek, Tom Sturridge, Luther Ford and Rebecca Hall.

Set in the vibrant late ’80s in New York City, The Man I Love follows Jimmy George, an actor facing a life-threatening illness, who takes on what may be his final major role.

I’m a fan of Sachs’ 2023 film Passages, where his deft directorial touch saw him get the best out of an established talent like Ben Whishaw, as well as Franz Rogowski and Adèle Exarchopoulos, melding together an electric international cast with ease.

So I’m hoping for similar again this time, and something that stays with me – as well as perhaps surprises.

Fjord

Want to see a bald Sebastian Stan? Then Fjord is the film for you.

On a more serious note though, it’s an ominous drama co-starring Sentimental Value Oscar nominee Renate Reinsve, where the two play a devout Romanian-Norwegian couple who move to her remote hometown and befriend their new neighbours.

But when their daughter shows up at school with bruises, their lives are turned upside down by the community’s scrutiny.

Born in Romania, this marks Stan’s first major role where he’ll get to flex his language skills – as well as a return to Cannes following his impressive turn as a young Donald Trump in Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice in 2024.

Writer-director Cristian Mungiu won the Palme D’Or in 2007 with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days – as well as subsequent directing and writing prizes on the Croisette – so Fjord is well placed as a potential awards season contender.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Cannes enjoys its horror films, as evidenced by slasher Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, starring Hannah Einbinder (Hacks) and Gillian Anderson.

And if the fountain of blood that spurts forth in the trailer is anything to go by, then filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun hasn’t held back.

The movie follows a reboot of the infamous Camp Miasma slasher franchise, where the latest film’s director becomes obsessed with casting the mysterious, reclusive actress who played the ‘final girl’ in the original film.

But as they work together, they descend into a frenzy of psychosexual mania – and ‘a whole new kind of slasher emerges from the bottom of the lake’.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma sounds like deeply disturbed fun, as well as one of the more high profile films in contention for the independently-sponsored Queer Palm.

Victorian Psycho

Another horror to round things off, based on Virginia Feito’s novel of the same name, Victorian Psycho sounds like delightful (if terrifying) gothic excess.

Set at a remote manor, Ensor House, in 1858, eccentric new governess Winifred Notty (Maika Monroe) arrives, ready to take the children into hand.

But as staff members start disappearing, the family begins to wonder if there may be something amiss with their new governess…

Monroe is a well-versed scream queen thanks to It Follows, Villains and Longlegs – although this time it appears the tables are turned – and she has starry support from Jason Isaacs, Thomasin McKenzie, Ruth Wilson and Hamnet’s Jacobi Jupe.

The Cannes Film Festival runs from Tuesday May 12 – Saturday May 23, 2026.

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