- Throwback “Mina the Hollower” is One of the Best Games of 2026 (May 27, 2026)
With the enormous platformer “Shovel Knight,” developer Yacht Club Games cemented itself as a legendary indie studio. Its second game, “Mina the Hollower,” is finally here after years of “Shovel Knight” expansions and spin-offs. What I really admire about “Mina the Hollower” is that it’s an incredibly different game than “Shovel Knight”. Whereas the latter was a platformer inspired by the NES era, the former is an action-adventure that feels like a “Zelda” game on the Game Boy Color.
“Mina the Hollower” follows our eponymous protagonist, Mina, a genius mouse whose inventions have brought prosperity to Ossex, the lone major city in Tanebrous Isle. One of her creations, the Spark Generators, have shut down and she goes on a journey to restore the seven generators scattered throughout the island. While well-intentioned, she slowly learns that her generators might be used for nefarious purposes that she must uncover. The story is straightforward and sets a solid foundation and incentive for Mina to explore Tanebrous Isle.
The various different regions around the island are wonderfully diverse, from the sandy shores of Bone Beach to the icy tundras of Coltrane Peak, each environment is graphically pushed to its limits while still strictly sticking with the pixel design. The way the game utilizes colors keeps the adventure visually interesting.
Exploration in Tanebrous is a bit more open-ended too. True to its retro roots, the game doesn’t have any objective markers like modern games do, so you’ll need to rely on your instincts to figure out what to do next or how to reach a certain region. I wish there was a bit more hand-holding in this regard, but honestly I applaud “Mina the Hollower” for sticking with its guns here. Exploration is rewarding too, as you’ll be able to find upgrades such as being able to hold more healing vials, which can boost your survivability.
What really makes the world of “Mina the Hollower” truly alive is the hustle and bustle of Ossex, which acts as your central hub. Its citizens constantly move around, carrying out their days by running shops or simply just kicking objects down the street. It makes Mina’s solo adventure less lonely.
You can pick from several different weapons, such as her whip, as well as daggers and hammers. They all feel radically different. The whip lets Mina hit enemies safely from a distance, but can take a bit longer to come out as opposed to the daggers, which are near instantaneous but require her to be close up. There’s always a trade off to using certain weapons over others, so pick one that best fits your own playstyle.
Additionally, you can customize Mina further by equipping different trinkets, which augment her with passive abilities. The Proto Spark gives Mina a second lease on life should she fall, while Steady Shoes lets her move normally on terrain—she won’t slip on ice and shallow water won’t slow her down. It’s a great way to add some light RPG elements to spice up the gameplay.
Whereas many action adventure games let players roll or dodge attacks, Mina takes a unique approach. She can burrow underground for a short time to avoid enemies and their moves. However, Mina has to first do a short jump before going underground, so you’ll have to take that into account when timing your burrows. The trade off here is that Mina’s invincibility frames last considerably longer. This allows you to reposition Mina with a greater degree of freedom than a simple dodge would do. Admittedly, this took me a while to get used to, but once I got the hang of burrowing, I loved how fast and agile it made Mina feel.
However, one downside to the 2D-inspired graphics is that it’s sometimes hard to judge distances. During boss fights, I would burrow underground, and try to pop up behind the boss. Instead, I would appear right on top of them, and it’s a frustrating issue since simply touching enemies inflicts damage onto you.
Platforming is a bit tricky too, but there are plenty of quality-of-life mechanics that make judging jump distances easier. For example, Mina’s shadow will always appear, visually guiding your eyes on where to land.
“Mina the Hollower” is not an easy game by any stretch of the imagination. The bosses hit hard as if they were in a Soulslike game and you’ll have to learn their attack patterns in order to succeed. You can also collect Bones that are used as both currency to buy items like vials to heal or new trinkets, as well as act as EXP to level up Mina’s parameters such as attack and defense.
The Soulslike comparisons don’t end there! Dying will cause Mina to drop a “Spark” and she has to recover it before dying again, otherwise she’ll lose all of the Bones currently in her possession. So there’s a constant balance of trying to stay alive while gathering enough Bones. This tension forces you to be more careful when exploring and engaging with enemies, but ultimately leads to an intensely satisfying feeling when you do succeed or reach the next checkpoint to regroup and take a breather.
The game also has a bevy of modifiers you can turn on and off if the default experience is too hard. You can turn on settings like infinite health so you never die, or even crank up the difficulty with Mina taking three times as much damage as usual. It also tells you whether enabling a certain modifier will disable the ability to unlock Achievements/Trophies on your platform. That way, you won’t be able to cheat your way to 100% completion.
“Mina the Hollower” is another bold retro-inspired adventure with rewarding exploration, challenging combat, and a stylish presentation. Despite a few frustrations with depth perception and some aimlessness with story progression, its creative gameplay mechanics and exciting world makes it one of the best games of 2026.
Yacht Club Games provided a PC review copy of this title. It launches on May 29 for PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, and Xbox Series X|S.
- Going the Distance: Seeing “Rocky” in Concert (May 27, 2026)
On a recent summery Saturday evening in Chicago, moviegoers had the opportunity to take in any number of current releases, from “Michael” to “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” from “Obsession” to “The Sheep Detectives.” There were even some limited engagement showings of the two “Top Gun” movies.
Still, the largest crowd for any single screening—by far—was for a film that turns 50 this November.
“Rocky.”
Some 1,540 fans flocked to the Auditorium Theatre in the Loop for a “live-to-picture” screening, with the Chicago Philharmonic performing Bill Conti’s iconic, Oscar-nominated score. I saw “Rocky” twice at the River Oaks Theatre in Calumet City in the winter of 1976-1977, and I’ve watched it somewhere around a million-trillion times on TV over the years, but this was my first time seeing it with an audience in nearly five decades. It was also my first time ever seeing it with a live orchestra providing the musical accompaniment, from the melancholy, piano-driven sounds of the early scenes to the rousing “Gonna Fly Now” during the world-famous training sequence.
It made for a glorious night at the movies.
Live music and cinema have co-starred together for more than a century—a move borne in part out of practical necessity. Early 35mm projectors produced loud, grating mechanical clatter, and with no recorded audio track for films of the 1910s and well into the 1920s, organists, pianists, or even entire orchestras were brought in. Movie palaces such as the Mark Strand Theatre on Broadway, the Million Dollar Theatre in Los Angeles (built by Sid Grauman), and the Chicago Theatre on State Street in Chicago featured full orchestral accompaniment.
Cut to the early 2000s and the Live-to-Projection concerts of “The Lord of the Rings” movies, with orchestras in cities around the world performing Howard Shore’s music to the films in the original trilogy. Over the last decade, the live-to-picture event has become a staple of popular culture, with films ranging from the “Star Wars” and “Spider-Man” franchises to “La La Land,” “Hook,” and “The Lion King” getting the full orchestral treatment. The trend has extended to the video game industry, with live concert experiences highlighting titles such as “The Legend of Zelda” and “Final Fantasy.”
The “Auditorium Philm” series in Chicago officially launched in 2024 with “Blade Runner.” This year’s roster includes “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Edward Scissorhands,” and “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York”–yes, “Home Alone 2.” Says Rich Regan, CEO of The Auditorium: “Experiencing these iconic films with each magnificent score performed by the Chicago Philharmonic amplified by The Auditorium’s perfect acoustics creates an unforgettable energy.”
You could feel that energy for the “Rocky” screening. Couples, groups of fans, guys wearing vintage “ROCKY” and “Mighty Mick’s Boxing Gym” T-shirts. 1976, meet 2026.
Settling in for the screening of “Rocky,” I was reminded of the darkness of Sylvester Stallone’s screenplay. Director John Avildsen and cinematographer James Crabe leaned into the grittiness of the story–and the music, at first, is spare and achingly sad. At times, the orchestra stood rigid still on the stage, as we bear witness to the hopelessness of Rocky’s world, from his brutal bout with fellow “tomato can” Spider Rico (Pedro Lovell) to his daytime job as an enforcer for the loan shark mobster Gazzo (Joe Spinell) to his halting and awkward attempts at courting Talia Shire’s Adrian. Sometimes the music would gently underscore glimpses of Rocky’s humanity, whether he’s opting not to break the thumbs of Bob, the dock worker who owes Gazzo, or trying to give a life lesson to Jodie Letizia’s Marie. Not that Rocky is rewarded for such efforts; Gazzo chastises him, and Marie delivers a parting shot: “Hey Rocky! Screw you, creepo!”
Many of these early scenes are punctuated by just a tinkling piano or a plaintive French horn, with the unresolved, hanging cadences sounding even more lonely and wistful in the live orchestral setting. It’s a minimalist score, punching home the desperate reality of Rocky’s day-to-day existence.
Still, a shard of optimism begins to emerge with the recurring strings and piano of “Adrian’s Theme,” which highlights the tender, sweet budding romance—the love story at the heart of “Rocky.” By the time Carl Weathers’ Apollo Creed literally picks Rocky’s name out of a book of fighters (“The EYE-Talian Stallion”), Rocky and Adrian are a couple. The music reflects that for the first time in a long time or maybe ever, they’re experiencing something new.
Hope.
After the intermission, the Chicago Philharmonic really went to work.
As you’d expect, the audience loved the orchestra’s note-perfect rendition of “Gonna Fly Now,” with that familiar horn fanfare and the bass line driving home Rocky’s triumphant training sequence, culminating with him conquering the museum steps that knocked the wind out of him earlier. That scene has been played, replayed, and parodied countless times over the last 50 years, but seeing it on the big screen with the live orchestral accompaniment took me back to my teenage years watching “Rocky” in Cal City. The thrill is decidedly not gone.
My favorite musical passage in the entire film is “Going the Distance,” which accompanies the punishing, round-by-round montage of the fight, with Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed exchanging blows and knocking each other around the ring, until they’re both bloodied, bruised, exhausted, and barely able to lift their arms into a fighting stance. The Chicago Philharmonic’s performance of the swelling and stirring suite was so brilliant and so spot-on that if you didn’t see them onstage, you’d swear you were listening to a particularly pristine audio track. The climactic bell of the fight is synced to “The Final Bell” number, with Rocky crying out “Adrian!” until they embrace in the ring.
We have a lot of big event films coming out in the summer of 2026, but I’m not sure I’ll have a better moviegoing experience this year.
- Cannes 2026: La Gradiva, Dora, Gabin (May 26, 2026)
As excited as I was for the Cannes films in the Main Competition, I always look forward to the sidebar sections with just as much, if not more, anticipation. “The Chronology of Water,” “My Father’s Shadow,” “Pillion,” and “Urchin” all premiered in Un Certain Regard last year, while Critics’ Week was the home of “A Useful Ghost,” “Left-Handed Girl,” and “Nino.”
This dispatch contains reviews for two films in the Director’s Fortnight Section and one film in Critics’ Week that may go down as not only the best film of the festival, but one of the best films to grace Cannes audiences, period.
One of the many miracles of Marine Atlan’s “La Gradiva” is the way it embodies in its bones, something that only an art form like cinema can do: act as a dinner party to bring past and present to commune together, where frozen histories can come to life and modern angsts can be mythologized in real time. It takes the urn of the teenagers’ class-trip story and, through naturalistic performances, tender direction, and a clever script, achieves something akin to filmmaking necromancy, turning those tried-and-true ashes into something wholly fresh.
It’s one of the best films of the year, one that redraws the boundary lines of how stories of similar ilk can be told. It’s a story about the mapping of desire across time, the revelations that can come with misunderstanding, and the tragic reality that we are unable to fully understand what’s happening to us as it happens. If we’re lucky, we’re fortunate to look back in reappraisal, but more often than not, the nuances of our lives will be a mystery even to us, destined to be unpacked by loved ones who believe we left this world too soon.
Atlan’s craft and vision bleed through in the very first scene, as we follow high school seniors on a class trip through Naples. Opening on a train, we see James (Mitia Capellier-Audat) in the throes of a passionate hook-up with Angela (Hadya Fofana). Atlan and co-cinematographer Pierre Mazoyer keep the camera close to James’ and Angela’s faces, capturing their passion, while light bleeds from the car windows, marking their bodies in a luminous afterglow. Unbeknownst to the two, James’ best friend, Toni (Colas Quignard), observes them in silence, with Atlan and Mazoyer focusing on the shadows that mark his face. Later, Suzanne (Suzanne Gerin) watches as well, a studious girl who masks her self-loathing with stellar academic performance.
This voyeuristic ritual, of characters flitting between witnessing and awakening, will define much of the haunting magic of this film. Indeed, like a secret that you can keep safe with a stranger, there’s a fleeting sense of protection you get from “La Gradiva” unfolding.
Atlan’s thesis clicks into play during one of the many moments the class trip pauses to observe a historical site, and one of the class teachers, Mercier (Antonia Bursesi), gives a lesson. In one sequence, she explains what happened to the residents of Naples when Vesuvius erupted, describing how the “pyroclastic flow” fell from the sky, raining burning ash and rock on the people below, as “like an engraving in slow motion.” Critically, Atlan moves the camera during this description, moving away from the faces of bored students and even from Mercier’s passionate visage to look at modern Naples. This contrast between Mercier’s violent description and the bucolic countryside is a striking moment: an invocation of history, in all its multifaceted nature, to rest alongside the contemporary.
In another moment, the class observes frescos (large paintings) amidst another set of ruins. What follows is one of the film’s best sequences, one that puts the youthful actors’ talents on full display as they flit between dialogue-heavy moments and powerful silences. As the class moves from simply spewing their initial observations of the painting to understanding the historical exegesis, they learn that the painting, which seems to depict women in the throes of celebration, is actually a picture of a sinister indoctrination into a Dionysian cult. “I don’t think it’s a celebration, I think it’s a catastrophe,” Angela says.
There’s a mix of inebriation and fear that befalls the characters, and one that would be an apt descriptor of these students who themselves are at the precipice of great change. It’s in moments like this where Atlan merges the historical and the contemporary, using one to illuminate the other.
The imbuing of nuance into static histories is tragically at play in Toni’s story as well. Part of what drives Toni is the belief that coming back to Naples is a homecoming; as he tells his family’s story, his grandparents fell in love, and his grandfather died in a 1980 earthquake. His heartbroken grandmother then left for France. Of course, reality is much more complex, and “La Gradiva,” if it’s not about anything else, is about the shattering of mythology.
Throughout Toni’s life, we bear witness to the agonizing pain of building our lives around certain stories, only to learn that those stories weren’t always true, or, at the very least, were uglier than we gave them credit for. His story is also a powerful reminder about the importance of community, of leaning on those around us in our worst moments, when the temptation to do the worst thing to ourselves feels like the only recourse and possible next step.
The entire ensemble is excellent, and even at two and a half hours, I could have watched these youth flirt, fight, and dream for hours more. They’re characters who are so vital and brimming with life that when anything devastating happens to them, it comes as a full-bodied shock. When we’re young, it’s hard to believe in anything other than the here and now, that our lives can be explained away, and that transformation is always within our grasp. “La Gradiva,” with the way it cherishes its characters and their global and personal histories, is a reminder that we’re part of living, breathing stories.
Swapping breezy ash for watery sands, “Dora,” from director July Jung, starts as one type of drama before peeling back its layers to get at something more primal and delicate. By the film’s end, there’s no one who hasn’t had their skeletons removed or their confessions hidden. The process of such unraveling can be difficult to watch, but it’s compelling thanks to July’s refusal to allow for easy villains or heroes. This is a film that rewards patience and can at times punish your empathy, as you witness characters make decisions that you can’t help but understand and critique.
Unfolding with the dramatic thrust of a parable, we meet the titular Dora (Kim Do-yeon), a woman plagued by an oozing rash; she wears the wounds like clothing, with few crevices of her body left unmarked by pus and blood. She and her parents settle in a remote coastal community, where they befriend Japanese neighbor Nami (Sakura Ando), her husband, and their children. The hope is that Dora can take her time to heal, away from the prying eyes of the big city, without feeling alone in her recovery. What transpires next is a Freudian nightmare (or dream?) of scandalous proportions, as Dora is caught in a web of affairs, relationships, and understated and overt passions among Nami and her family.
A concept that Jung shatters early on in the film is the idea that Dora’s exodus is somehow for her benefit. While she and her ailing father need serious medical care, it’s evident that her removal from society is a way for her parents to have more control over her. It’s heartbreaking to witness her come to terms with the reality of her situation, and to see the ways she has little distance from the emotions of the adults around her, who, if they’re not going to hide how they feel, can do a better job of stewarding their crash-outs. Take a moment where Dora’s mother poignantly tells Dora that her father is having an affair with Nami, barely concealing her bitterness. Dora doesn’t know how to fully process this information, other than lashing back out at her mother. It’s clear she lives in a world where she has to be her own savior, and when her back is against the wall, she’ll devolve into replicating the tactics she sees from the adults around her.
This tumult is captured with furor and grace thanks to cinematographer Irina Lubtchansky. That all that transpires takes place on a truly beautiful chunk of land, whose sands are kissed by the ocean at night and by rain by day, underscores the tragedy and beauty of Dora’s life.
Our north star remains the ever-volatile Dora, whose storm of emotions and open-hearted desires anchor the film’s most tragic and beautiful moments. Kim, best known for her K-pop work, shoulders the weight of playing the titular role with poise and power. Her skills in singing and dancing can transfer over so effortlessly to a character like Dora, who projects all her emotions loudly, even the most understated ones, as if she’s in a theater. Kim’s a natural performer who leans into Dora’s angst and the violating injustice of experiencing the worst the world has to offer, but lacking the faculties to properly express them.
Dora has a hunger for life, a desire to sink her teeth into all that is forbidden and taste that which has been denied to her, and as she’s led by such hunger, it’s equal parts harrowing and inspiring, as we see the fallout of her pursuits. It’s a role that is saved from being one-note thanks to Kim’s command of Dora’s interiority; if July’s naturalistic direction, Lubtchansky’s eerie cinematography, and Jang Younggyu’s and Choi Taehyun’s spectral score isn’t enough to convince, watch at the very least for Kim’s volatile performance.
From the way it obfuscates the camera to the extent that it feels like we’re watching a fictional story unfold, to its exploration of the painful, unique bonds between fathers and sons, Maxence Voiseux’s “Gabin” evokes Michał Marczak’s “Closure” from earlier this year. Voiseux’s documentary is a nonfiction stunner, a beautiful distillation of ten years of life into an under-two-hour runtime that never feels slight. Voiseux and his collaborators have mastered the art of distillation, knowing that, in lieu of capturing all the nuances of someone’s life, the best they can do is go into detail a few times, using those anecdotes as springboards to talk about larger happenings.
The focus is the titular child, who would rather play with the animals on his family farm than slaughter them. Unfortunately, for his family, his father, Dominique, has built their lives around the trade in flesh, and their philosophical disagreements form the central tension of the film, in contrast to Gabin’s more tender relationship with his mother, Patricia, who shares her youngest son’s love for wildlife. “I’m sure animals listen to us … They have feelings … They know how to give back to us,” Gabin says at one point.
As the film traces Gabin’s journey from being eight to eighteen, it acts not just as a showcase for the ways dreams can be nurtured under pressure but for the ways reality often disrupts our most open-hearted aspirations. Ample screen time is dedicated to Gabin playing a farm simulator video game; it’s a way for him to both satisfy his father’s dream of taking over the family business and avoid the actual death of animals. The scope of Gabin’s dreams is eclectic and unified: desiring to become a dog breeder, save his mother’s farm, and train a contest cow. As he grows older, though, what may have been excused by youth is confronted by his father once Gabin realizes he has to make decisions about who he wants to be and where he wants to be.
Part of what makes “Gabin” so emotionally poignant is the unflashy, serene camera style that Voiseux employs. It’s observational filmmaking at its least intrusive, with characters rarely staring at the camera (or, frankly, even showing any awareness that it’s in the room with them). Conversations have awkward pauses, taper off, and crescendo the way a normal conversation with a loved one or friend might. Where Voiseux allows himself some personal flourishes is in the loving way he captures wildlife. He frames them the way Gabin sees them: as beings to be on equal footing with, to behold and cherish. Close-ups of cows, sheep, and dogs abound in a film that uses the same visual language to frame its human subjects as it does its animal ones.
Going into this film, I knew nothing of and cared little for the people living in the northern Artois region. But I found myself, as the minutes went on, thoroughly invested in Gabin’s battle between vocation, family, and duty. It’s a testament to Voiseux’s work as a director, his ability to slyly place viewers so directly into the shoes and skin of his subject that we don’t realize until later that our desires, hopes, and fears have become one.
- Cannes 2026: Table of Contents (May 26, 2026)
The 2026 Cannes Film Festival starts Tuesday, May 12th, running through May 24th. The Ebert team returns this year with coverage of all of the major films in review and video form.
Below is a running index of our reviews, dispatches, and video reports from the festival.
A Feature: Ten Great Performances of Cannes 2026
Full Reviews
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma review: Slasher fans get the homage they deserve by Brian Tallerico
Propeller One-Way Night Coach review: Travolta’s directorial debut never takes flight by Brian Tallerico
Hope review: Bonkers Korean monster movie destroys the hero narrative by Robert Daniels
Her Private Hell review: Refn is back with shallow trip to the underworld by Brian Tallerico
Fjord review: Thorny moral quandary in this icy drama by Brian Tallerico
The Samurai and the Prisoner review: Riveting 16th century epic plays like Samurai Columbo by Brian Tallerico
Victorian Psycho: More frustrating than fun horror-comedy can’t find a tone by Brian Tallerico
Video Reports
Cannes 2026 Video #1: The 79th Cannes Film Festival Begins!
Cannes 2026 Video #2: A Look Back at Day One of the Fest
Cannes 2026 Video #3: Nagi Notes, Camp Miasma, Werner Herzog
Cannes 2026 Video #4: Festival Dispatch with Zachary Lee
Cannes 2026 Video #5: Festival Dispatch with Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026 Video #6: Club Kid, Paper Tiger, Clarissa
Cannes 2026 Video #7: Festival Dispatch with Jason Gorber
Cannes 2026 Video #8: Dua, I’ll Be Gone in June, La Gravida
Cannes 2026 Video #9: Critics Roundtable
Cannes 2026 Video #10: Reflecting on the Award Winners
Festival Dispatches
Cannes 2026: The Electric Kiss by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: Fatherland, Parallel Tales by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: Nagi Notes, Ashes by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: Ken Russell’s The Devils, Pan’s Labyrinth, Moonlighting by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: All of a Sudden, Think Good by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: Clarissa, Atonement, Butterfly Jam by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: The Beloved, A Woman’s Life, Gentle Monster by Robert Daniels
Cannes 2026: Paper Tiger, Sheep in the Box by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: John Lennon: The Last Interview, La Libertad Doble by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: The Meltdown, La Frappe, I’ll Be Gone in June by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: Avedon, Visitation by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: Club Kid, Marie Madeleine by Robert Daniels
Cannes 2026: The Unknown, Another Day by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: Iron Boy, Tangles, Lucy Lost by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: Minotaur, Red Rocks by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: The Man I Love, Orange-Flavoured Wedding by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: Dua, Made of Flesh and Fuel, Six Months in a Pink and Blue Building by Robert Daniels
Cannes 2026: The Black Ball, Bitter Christmas by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: A Man of His Time, Moulin, Coward by Robert Daniels
Cannes 2026: I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, Diary of a Chambermaid, La Perra by Robert Daniels
Cannes 2026: Maverick: The Epic Adventures of David Lean, Dernsie: The Amazing Life of Bruce Dern by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: The Birthday Party, When the Night Falls by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: The Dreamed Adventure, Too Many Beasts, Women on Trial, Che Guevara: The Last Companions by Ben Kenigsberg
Cannes 2026: Everytime, Ben’Imana, Titanic Ocean by Robert Daniels
Cannes 2026: Colony, The End of It, Roma Elastica by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: Full Phil, Sanguine (Species), Jim Queen by Zachary Lee
Cannes 2026: Second Takes on Some of the Year’s Best Films by Brian Tallerico
Cannes 2026: Elephants in the Fog, Yesterday, The Eye Didn’t Sleep, A Girl’s Story by Isaac Feldberg
Cannes 2026: Low Expectations, Death Has No Master, The Station by Isaac Feldberg
Cannes 2026: La Gradiva, Dora, Gabin by Zachary Lee
- Cannes 2026: Low Expectations, Death Has No Master, The Station (May 26, 2026)
A tender, sensitively observed first feature from Norway’s Eivind Landsvik, “Low Expectations” makes its home in the same Oslo where Joachim Trier and Dag Johan Haugerud set their quiet, introspective films. There’s a dreamily diffuse quality to the Nordic capital that befits the strain of empathetic naturalism that’s emanated of late from the country’s cinema. Amid the city’s serene, encouraging stillness, characters in the process of personal growth can come of age despite their stops and starts, on whatever organic timetable emerges.
Debuting in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes, “Low Expectations” marks the acting debut of Marie Ulven, better known as “girl in red”. Under that name, the 27-year-old Norwegian musician has specialized in synth-laden bedroom-pop anthems that sound at once ambient and stadium-ready, with bright melodies and spiky, shiny guitar riffs running an electric charge through her intimate, relatable lyricism. Deeply personal in their exploration of mental health and sexuality, these songs lay bare Ulven’s inner battles with brain chemistry as often as they find her nursing crushes on close friends or dancing with girls at the club. (Not for nothing has “Hey, do you listen to girl in red?” become lesbian shorthand.) In “Low Expectations,” starring as Maja, a musician who falls into depression as her popularity soars, Ulven delicately draws upon her career trajectory—including struggles with OCD and anxiety that spiked during the pandemic and found their way into her debut album—to form the aching foundation of a character whose sadness and self-doubt are threatening to stall her out.
Crushed by the pressure of global stardom and a record-deal advance, and with her confidence and self-image deteriorating, Maja moves back in with her supportive but frustrated mother (Tone Monstrum) and starts working part-time as an exam invigilator at a local high school. Recognized from her expansive social-media following by some students, though most leave her alone, Maja forms a friendship with senior school administrator Johannes (Trier regular Anders Danielsen Lie), who senses her loneliness and gently tries to reach through it. She also bonds with a student dancer (Embla Berntsen) who has followed Maja’s career out of both admiration for her music and curiosity as to how she might pursue her own passions.
Landsvik’s favored tone is one of witty, reassuring optimism, assisted by the wistful hues of 16mm cinematography by Andreas Bjørseth. Certain scenes in “Low Expectations,” including a particular standout set in a clothing store, strike a ruefully funny note, and his script occasionally expands to encompass an entertaining aside—like one in which Johannes and fellow teacher Oscar, played by Snorre Kind Monsson, bond over their shared obsession with Michael Mann’s “Heat.” But these touches are carefully judged, and a similar balance is struck with the heavier scenes where Maja’s mental crisis makes itself apparent. On the whole, the film is so patient and measured as to feel practically palliative, with Ulven’s magnetic and refreshingly unaffected lead performance lending it a perfectly lo-fi kind of star power. This is a showcase for Ulven’s acting abilities more than her music, though the original song she contributes is also memorably poignant (and surely another selling point for girl in red’s fanbase). You’ll come away from the film—like Maja—at once lightly soothed and quietly nourished.
A more unsettling type of entrancement awaits in “Death Has No Master,” a Venezuelan drama from Jorge Thielen Armand—also in Directors’ Fortnight—about a woman named Caro (Asia Argento) who returns to her father’s cacao plantation in order to sell it, only to discover unwelcome occupants who conjure forth demons of their family’s colonial heritage.
An ominous, slow-simmering postcolonial giallo that channels the subgenre popularized by Italian horror maestros like Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento in more ways than just its central casting of Argento’s daughter, the film picks up as Caro arrives back in Venezuela after years living elsewhere, determined to set her father’s affairs in order and to extract any remaining profits from his crumbling estate. Arriving at the decrepit property with the dense ambience of the surrounding jungle deafening her on all sides, Caro discovers that its mansion is still occupied—by its current caretaker, Sonia (Dogreika Tovar, a non-professional actor who emerges as the film’s most spellbinding player), daughter of the previous caretaker, and her young son (Yermain Sequera), as well as another tenant (José Aponte) and an elder named Yoni (Arturo Rodriguez), who watched Caro grow up.
All are cautiously tolerant of Caro’s presence, though it’s immediately clear from her pink “Amore Amore” T-shirt, expensive shoes, and chunky designer sunglasses—not to mention her haughty, imperious demeanor—that she’s a foreigner in this country she lays claim to. As Roque warns Caro, “If you’re going to sell, sell quickly, because these lands will swallow you up.” At first perturbed, then incensed, by the presence of “squatters,” as she calls them, Caro vows to push them out of the family mansion, though the local police advise her to let the matter go, on account of how many years Sonia and the others—already well-known to the provincial and tight-knit community—have lived there. But Caro, smarting from decades of barely suppressed familial trauma tied up in her relationship to her father and the property she has inherited, can’t do that. Her tactics instead grow desperate and duplicitous, leading all involved down a dark, lawless path—and pulling “Death Has No Master” into a sanguinary spiral.
With the specter of slavery embodied by former plantation workers who still roam the jungles, wielding spears and speaking allegorically of the land as an entity that can be controlled by an occupying power but never wholly owned, Thielen Armand deepens the postcolonial tensions between Caro and Sonia, even as this side of the story settles for a more primal resonance in comparison to films like “White Material” and “Chocolat,” by Claire Denis, that have excavated the complex barriers and betrayals of everyday postcolonial existence more completely. Instead, methodically guiding his film toward its bloodthirsty denouncement, Thielen Armand first steeps it in an atmosphere of miasmic, pulsating dread, suggesting a hypnagogic inevitability in the fates of his characters. Oppressive sound design envelops all, compounding the desolation of the humid hacienda setting, and is afforded greater dimension by the ominously throbbing drumbeats of its score.
There’s comparatively far less conveyed here on the level of dialogue, and Argento—who reportedly learned Spanish for this underwritten role—is most effective in channeling Caro’s eruptions of venomous rage and entitlement, the visceral sense of a character being corroded from the inside out by emotions carved into her at an early age. “Death Has No Master” successfully accrues tension ahead of its explosive finale, one that pays off the story’s slow boil with an outward spiral of violence brutal enough to stain the soil red, Peckinpah-style, while solidifying its larger ideas about cycles of colonial oppression and the annihilation they are still capable of enacting when passed down through generations.
Over in the Critics’ Week sidebar section, Sara Ishaq’s Yemen-set drama “The Station” trains its gaze on an oasis of female solidarity amid a raging regional conflict. With their country ripped asunder now more than a decade ago by a civil war that continues today, the Yemeni people still struggle to endure war-torn daily circumstances. Upon reportedly learning from family members about a real, female-only fuel station in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital city, Ishaq—here making her narrative feature debut after directing the Oscar-nominated short documentary “Karama Has No Walls,” about the 2011 Yemeni uprising—was moved to craft a fictional story around Layal (Manal Al-Maliki), a resourceful woman tasked with managing this essential business. Shot in Jordan with a cast of largely non-professional actors, Ishaq’s film is a Critics’ Week highlight, paying a tense and powerful tribute to the resilience of Yemeni women under cycles of patriarchal violence.
As “The Station” gets underway, Layal’s efforts to make ends meet at her small station—which, in addition to carefully rationing out gasoline in jerrycans, sells “contraband” material like school textbooks, lingerie, feminine care products, and contraceptives—often revolve around insulating it from the threat of violence that otherwise hangs heavy in the air (literally, with fighter jets loudly tearing through the skies—across Sanaa). A sign outside the station’s gated compound reads: “No men, no weapons, no politics,” a proclamation of purpose that Layal fights to protect. Though she’s been able to maintain this sanctuary with the conditional support of a sheik’s wife (Shorooq Mohammed), there’s nothing secure about Layal’s existence.
When her 12-year-old brother Latih (Rashad Alrajeh), typically confined to the compound as the sole male in its all-women environment, attracts unwanted attention from nearby soldiers and bureaucrats who believe he’s old enough to enlist, Layal—who has already lost an older brother to the fighting—struggles to save him from a similar fate. As she submits to paying bribes to ensure Latih can remain at home, Layal comes into contact with her estranged sister, Shams (Abeer Mohammed), whose arrival—along with her differing, harsher opinions about what it will take to keep Latih safe—further complicates matters.
Ishaq’s film operates along two intriguing parallel tracks, bringing viewers inside the fuel stop’s private sanctuary of Yemeni women—whose community is a welcoming, safe space, alive with little shows of solidarity and light-hearted banter—as it expands subtly outward to acknowledge the cultural and societal tensions of the seldom-seen world outside the station. One result of this is that we gradually learn more about the various pressures shaping Latih. Even as Layal strives to shield him from the outside environment, he’s sensitive to the camaraderie that other boys and the soldiers in surrounding areas seem to enjoy, and a new friendship with the tall, ungainly Ahmad—a 13-year-old who serves as Shams’ chaperone, per the region’s religiously restrictive laws—prompts Latih to grow up faster than Layal is prepared for. Consistently well-performed, nicely photographed, and surprisingly earnest even as the story takes several darker turns en route to a conclusion that—though foregone—still manages to pack an emotional punch, “The Station” is an emotionally resonant drama that augurs well for Ishaq’s future in narrative film.
