- Cannes 2026 Video #6: Club Kid, Paper Tiger, Clarissa (May 19, 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. In this video dispatch, Scott Dummlery interviews Managing Editor Brian Tallerico about “Club Kid,” “Paper Tiger,” “Clarissa,” and more. Then Chaz takes us back to the 2014 Cannes screening of “Life Itself” at the festival.
- Cannes 2026: Table of Contents (May 19, 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.
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
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
Festival Dispatches
An Essential Showcase in a Difficult Time: Cannes Film Festival 2026 Preview by Lisa Nesselson
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: Club Kid, Marie Madeleine (May 19, 2026)
Actors-turned-directors are turning heads at Cannes, and in this dispatch. Here are two films, one from Un Certain Regard and another from the Cannes Premieres section, which not only rely on actors moving behind the camera. They’re also queer movies that offer two very different experiences but nonetheless share the common theme of people searching to affirm their identities while finding wisdom in the process.
“Club Kid,” Jordan Firstman’s moving anthem for fatherhood, is a sweet, late-stage coming-of-age narrative that’s among the surprises at Cannes. After several shorts and online skits and impressions lampooning stereotypes of the most annoying people wrought by quarantine, Firstman makes his feature directorial debut, which is now A24’s major purchase of the festival for a stunning $15 million.
This Un Certain Regard film opens in 2016 Brooklyn with a hypnotic barrage of unbridled drug taking, queer sensuality, and steamy strobe lights. At the center of this frenzied space is the gay party promoter, Peter (Firstman, portraying a spin on his online persona), who’s doling out bumps of cocaine to all takers. While partying, two straight, drunken British women proposition Peter for sex. He rejects them. Later, one of them finds him making out with another man and decides to create a threesome in a back room. Though Peter is annoyed, when he hears the voyeuristic man he’s with is turned on by watching him have sex with a woman, Peter relents.
Fast forward ten years, and Peter is still partying hard, but he’s clearly worn out. His business partner Sophie (Cara Delevingne), who’s equally troubled, is tired of Peter’s unprofessionalism and decides to cut him from their party company. Nearly broke, with a rent-controlled apartment where Nicky (Eldar Isgandarov), a ne’er-do-well queer philosopher from Azerbaijan, sleeps on his couch—Peter is further shocked when one of those British women arrives with his son, Arlo (Reggie Absolom). His mother is dead, and it’s now up to Peter to raise him.
What follows is an endearing display of how children can often inspire you to be your best self, even when you don’t think that self exists yet. Firstman and Absolom have sincere chemistry, nurturing a closeness that isn’t your prototypical maudlin father-son movie dynamic. There’s genuine trust in every scene between them. Firstman gets further mileage from Diego Calva, who plays Arlo’s stunning social worker. He also manages to pull real figures from his scene into the film, giving it a realist quality.
While Firstman proves his chops as a director—replicating the late-night New York scene with verve and intensity—he is equally impressive as an actor. When Peter and Arlo’s father-son bonding is interrupted by surprising circumstances, Firstman must shoulder a heavy emotional load. He doesn’t waver. One never gets the sense that he’s overreaching or manufacturing expression and feelings; instead, they arrive with a force as natural as the film’s side-splitting comedy. And though the film is about a man searching for equilibrium for the sake of his son, “Club Kid” is so insatiably fun, you hope the party never ends.
Another queer film, this one from Haiti, is Gessica Généus’ rhapsodic religious interrogation “Marie Madeleine.” Beginning on an aesthetically daring note: a dreamlike dawn sees a red-headed Black woman sauntering by the sea. She will awaken hours later, and through her, we will see, via a blurred, fisheye POV, Joseph (Béonard Kervens Monteau) approaching to rescue her. He takes her to the hospital as a whore who’s having a miscarriage, hence the red streak running down her pink dress. The woman, Mary Magdalene (Généus), is a sex worker; Joseph is the preacher’s son. The latter’s father is opening a church across the street from Mary’s brothel, a geographical landmine that leads to explosive confrontations between the highly religious parishioners and these carefree sex workers.
Though Joseph holds God and the Bible in high regard, he doesn’t condemn Mary. She encourages his passion for photography and brings him into her eclectic friend group, which includes a gay man intrigued by the shy Joseph. Mary and Joseph are also connected by losing their mothers at early ages and being generally misunderstood by those around them. Both Généus and Monteau deeply understand their respective characters, particularly Monteau—whose frame is so closed off from the world that he possesses the rigidity of tabernacle.
When it comes to critiquing the viciousness of zealous religiosity, Généus also assuredly marries the visual narrative with the scripted themes. The layout of Joseph’s church is consciously structured and overly composed, while Mary’s brothel is open and airy. The director also develops rapturous sequences that become seared into the spirit, like a queer parade whose revelry turns into a swirling celebration. Sometimes, Généus can rush her film, especially in the film’s first five minutes, which barely give space for the tragedy to settle before neatly tying up loose ends. Nevertheless, “Marie Madeleine” provides such soaring visuals that it’s easy to have an unshakeable faith in this ambitious aim.
- Cannes 2026: Avedon, Visitation (May 18, 2026)
If, as is suggested early in Ron Howard’s documentary “Avedon,” the genius of an archetypal Richard Avedon photograph lies in how it strips away everything extraneous—so that nothing remains but the audience, the subject, and a white background—then making a film about Avedon might be counterproductive. Additional context is irrelevant; the art is the thing.
Still, “Avedon”—showing in Cannes’s Special Screenings section—has more than its share of sharp insights into the photographer’s working methods, along with some good gossip about his interactions with (seemingly) nearly every important personality of the 20th century. While the worshipful tone in Howard’s movie is what you’d expect from a profile produced in association with the Richard Avedon Foundation—there are a few asides about how barbs from art critics stung—there is ample footage of Avedon himself, and anecdotes from friends provide a vivid sense of his personality. (The writer Adam Gopnik suggests Avedon had a habit of leaving answering-machine messages with the words “don’t pick up.”)
It is interesting to hear that Avedon felt the camera essentially got in his way, and that if he could, he would have snapped photos directly with his eyes. (He eventually switched to a system that allowed him to stand beside the lens instead of behind it.) Isabella Rossellini compares him to a hunter waiting for his shot, an attitude she contrasts with the snap-happy photographers she indicates populate the fashion world.
We hear how long it took Avedon to get an unguarded image from someone as used to cameras as Marilyn Monroe. His approach to politics is examined through his pictures of civil rights figures, Vietnam War officials, and the New Yorker “Democracy” series he was working on at the time of his death in 2004. There are stretches when Howard’s documentary rambles, especially toward the end, but that is par for the course for covering a career that—if the film’s numbers are accurate—encompassed around 16,000 sittings.
Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Fatherland” is one of the closest things to a consensus favorite in the competition so far, and part of what is bracing about it is its economy. It restricts its narrative to a brief moment in 1949 when the German writer Thomas Mann, who had been an outspoken anti-Nazi living in the United States, returned to postwar Germany for the first time. From that vantage point, the movie reflects on the country’s past and future.
In the Cannes Premiere section, Volker Schlöndorff’s “Visitation,” based on a novel by Jenny Erpenbeck that was published in English in 2010, takes the opposite approach. It spans decades of German history, but largely from one location—a lake house and its surroundings—where different families are swept up in the changes brought by the Nazi era and the Cold War.
The first half, which continues through the start of the immediate postwar rebuilding period, deals with the rise of the Nazis as experienced by an architect (Lars Eidinger, also at Cannes in László Nemes’s French Resistance drama “Moulin”) and his wife (Susanne Wolff) and a family of Jewish neighbors who feel the walls closing in on them.
The tragedy of that family leaves behind traces: Letters that the youngest, Doris, wrote for her grandparents in Poland are still tucked away in the house in the second half, when a family of ardent German communists who spent the war living in Soviet Union return to East Germany and move in—and ultimately encounter a country built more on back-scratching than on the socialist ideals to which the matriarch, Nora (Martina Gedeck), remains committed.
Nora’s granddaughter, Marija, is the narrator of both halves and grows up over the course of the second. One drawback of the expansive scope is that Schlöndorff winds up plodding through certain events while sacrificing clarity in others. The fate of the Eidinger character, who initially seeks to win the favor of the Nazi architect Albert Speer, then later tries to turn Speer’s rejection into a postwar advantage, seems particularly rushed.
But the conceit of using the single, lakeside-idyll location, which is given the “Cherry Orchard” treatment at the end, carries a charge in itself. These are characters who are caught up in history, even in a place of ostensible escape.
- Cannes 2026 Video #5: Festival Dispatch with Ben Kenigsberg (May 18, 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. In this video dispatch, Scott Dummler interviews correspondent Ben Kenigsberg about the latest from Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Pawel Pawlikowski, and Chaz flashes back to a prior Cannes convo with Spike Lee. Watch the video and enjoy an edited transcript below.
Scott Dummler:
Welcome back to Cannes 2026. I’m Scott Dummler here for RogerEbert.com. And today we’re joined by our old friend Ben Kenigsberg. Ben, great to see you.
Ben Kenigsberg:
Great. Thanks for having me back.
Scott:
Of course. How many years have we been doing this for RogerEbert.com now?
Ben:
I’ve been doing Cannes dispatches since 2013.
Scott:
How many years have you been coming to Cannes?
Ben:
Since 2008. Every year, it’s this strange feeling of anticipation, combined with the sense that I’m at the top of a roller coaster, about to take the plunge. And so, yeah, it’s always excitement mixed with terror. Just because it’s a lot, in a very short period of time, for sure.
Scott:
I understand the feeling, completely. Well, I know we’re going to talk about a couple of competition titles today. The first one I wanted to talk to you about is “All of a Sudden” by Hamaguchi. Can you tell us a little bit about that film, which is very highly anticipated?
Ben:
Yeah. Well, Hamaguchi has returned to competition after last competing with “Drive My Car” in 2021, which went on to receive widespread acclaim. And this film is the longest film in this year’s competition at three hours and 16 minutes.
Scott:
Thankfully, it’s the longest. That there’s nothing longer than that.
Ben:
But, you know, I think the film really sort of asks you to ponder the question of whether it justifies its length in a strange way. So, I mean, the narrative is very unusual. It’s about a French woman played by Virginie Efira, who studied anthropology in Japan but now works as a nursing home director in Paris.
And she forges this sort of unlikely, chance friendship with the Japanese theater director, played by Tao Okamoto. And, the two of them, they really share a kind of world view, and they complement each other well. And a lot of the film is about how to properly address people’s pain and issues of aging.
And how, because Efira’s character directs a nursing home, how to care for patients and how to really, truly see them and understand them. And one thing that’s very interesting about this film is that the actresses, both characters, are supposed to be fluent in Japanese and French, and my understanding is that the actresses actually had to learn the other language for this film.
So I really expect them to be in contention for the best actress prize.
Scott:
Yeah, I could see that too. I thought both performances were very strong, even though the film did not land for me. Critics like you are really falling over themselves to praise this movie, which is not unexpected. I came into this festival saying this was the movie highest on my list of expectations; it was the one I really wanted to see.
And for me, it fell flat. I have some recent experience with some of the issues it delves into, so maybe I’m too close to them, but I felt like a lot of what Hamaguchi is doing here didn’t resonate with me. From the dialog to the cinematography to even the blocking, a lot of it just felt forced, a little bit artificial.
And I felt like it undercut the narrative he was trying to convey in some of his messaging.
Ben:
No, it’s fair. One of my reservations about the film is that, for the most part, the characters are unfailingly kind to one another, even in extreme circumstances. You know, one is dying, even in these, you know, nursing homes, they don’t necessarily tend to be the most serene context necessarily.
So you do wonder if on some level, he’s, you know, painting a rosy or, I think, a word used in the film at one point, is utopian, a view of what dying can be like and of what grief can be like. But, you know, I think on some level, the film asks you to just accept this worldview or at least to consider it.
Scott:
I expect this film to really have a big international following just because of the director and the reviews it’s getting from Cannes.
Ben:
“Drive My Car,” as well.
Scott:
Of course. Of course.
I think his reputation has shown that he’s an international filmmaker. It’s got a big following.
Scott:
For sure. Another international filmmaker is Pawel Pawlikowski, and he’s got a film back here in Cannes as well. Can you tell us about “Fatherland”?
Ben:
Okay. So his last film at Cannes was “Cold War.” And, you know, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Fatherland because I’ve been a bit of a Pawlikowski skeptic. In “Cold War” and “Ida” and in this film, he’s developed a style that I would almost call an artifice.
All these recent films have been black-and-white. They’ve been in a narrow aspect ratio. He does something a little less in this film, as I recall, than in the last two, where he leaves a lot of excess headroom above the characters, which bugs me, irrationally. And yet the style just suited this film beautifully.
And I think one of the reasons I liked it is, well, it’s a biopic. Biopic is a genre that I also approach with a certain amount of trepidation. But I really like it when biopics focus on just a narrow time period, and a narrow set of issues that maybe give you insight into the characters as opposed to doing a kind of womb-to-tomb thing.
And this film is about the writer Thomas Mann, played by Hans Ziegler, and his daughter, Erika Mann, played by Sandra Huller, who’s a regular presence in Cannes and is wonderful in this movie as she usually is. She was in Anatomy of a Fall. And it focuses on this very specific time period when Thomas Mann, a staunch anti-Nazi who had been living in the United States, returns to Germany for the first time since before the war to receive the Goethe Prize in 1949.
And I think ultimately, it’s just a very poignant film on the issue of statelessness. They’re somehow perceived as not German, not American, not capitalist, not communist. And it’s just this very poignant state of in-between that is expressed in different ways in almost every scene as we follow them on their journey across the country. In just this one short time period.
Sandra Huller:
That she decided to leave everything she did behind after the death of her brother in order to be with her father and to help him fulfill his, I don’t know, chosen duty in life. That was enough for me to work on her and all the other things we found together. This is a true collaboration, and I like that.
Scott:
Now Sandra Huller, of course, has become an international star. Do you think she’s got any chance at an acting prize in this year’s Cannes?
Ben:
I mean, it depends on what happens with the actresses from All of a Sudden. Right? It’s still early. We’re not even halfway through the competition yet. So, making awards predictions at this point is always a little tricky. It’s tricky even the day before the awards happen. So who knows? Certainly, I think everyone we’ve talked about so far is a contender.
Scott:
Well, thank you so much for being here. I know we’ll see you around Cannes over the next week or so. And hopefully again on camera before the end of the festival.
Ben:
All right. Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Scott
Thanks, Ben. And now it’s time for today’s Cannes flashback.
Today we’re flashing back to 2025, when Chaz Ebert shared a little trash talk with Spike Lee.
Chaz Ebert:
Chaz Ebert from the home of the Chicago Bulls. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
Spike Lee
First of all, I want to ask you a question, okay? What was the last time Michael Jordan played?
Chaz:
He left with 6 rings.
Spike:
But I want you to know that Michael Jordan was born in Brooklyn, New York. He was born in Four Green Cumberland Hospital. That’s right. Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson, and Bernard King were all born in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. So thank you very much.
Chaz:
But tell me, where do the six bull rings reside….in Chicago! Ooh, ooh. Okay.
Voice over:
That’s all for now. But don’t forget to check back each day at RogerEbert.com/festivals for more reviews, news, and reactions from the Cannes Film Festival. We’ll see you then.
- Cannes 2026: 'Minotaur' is a Brilliant Look at Modern World Moral Rot (May 20, 2026)
Whether you like it or not, we live in perilous times. But it still seems hard to talk about this, to talk about what's broken, what's happening to humanity, what's going on all over the world, how rotten it has become. The easiest way to exist peacefully is to shut up, conform to the new rules, do what you're told, don't cause any trouble, and just stay in line. And this is what leads us even deeper into the depths of Hell. One of the best films at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival dares to tell an unflinching story about this pervasive moral rot and challenges us to observe how easy it is to lose all your humanity in order to hold on to money & power. Minotaur is the sixth feature film by acclaimed Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev and it might be his best yet. This hit me hard and I haven't stop analyzing it, making sense of it, processing its immensity in the hours since emerging from my screening. Extraordinarily powerful, stomach churning, of-the-moment cinema featuring Tarkovsky-inspired visual intricacy in every shot. Minotaur is a brilliant film about what's happening Russia – while also a story of what's happening everywhere around the world if you look closely. // Continue Reading ›
- Official Trailer for 'The Match' Doc About '86 Football World Cup Game (May 19, 2026)
"When does a match start? When does it end?" ⚽ Disney has revealed the official trailer for a documentary film titled The Match, an emotional look back at the iconic 1986 World Cup game. This just premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival this month playing in the Cannes Premiere section - it's rare they ever show docs at this fest meaning this is definitely worth a look. Beyond the Hand of God lies a deeper story... About the 1986 Argentina-England World Cup quarter final, exploring how it became a culmination of tensions between the two nations following the 1982 Falklands War. From directors Juan Cabral & Santiago Franco, narrated by Gary Lineker & Jorge Valdano, The Match tells the story of the iconic 1986 Football World Cup clash between Argentina & England at the Azteca Stadium. Using rare archival footage, including Maradona's controversial "Hand of God", the doc film reconstructs the match as a living memory, after more than 200 years of tension, encounters, and conflict between the two nations. Reviews say, "this entertaining exercise in deluxe nostalgia is peppered with enough quirky folklore and offbeat background detail to keep even sports-allergic viewers [...] engaged." This looks super fascinating for sports fans & history nerds alike. // Continue Reading ›
- Hollywood Mockumentary 'The Second Coming of John Cooper' Trailer (May 19, 2026)
"Mark my words: John Cooper will be back on top again!" Bonus Level has revealed the official trailer for an indie comedy film titled The Second Coming of John Cooper, marking the feature directorial debut of filmmaker Kevin Kraft. This premiered a few years ago and is getting a full VOD release on platforms this June to watch at home. Right from your own couch, too. Kevin Kraft's The Second Coming of John Cooper is a mockumentary about a (fake) Hollywood actor. The story follows washed-up celebrity John Cooper, who partied away his career and vanished from the public eye. When a documentary crew discovers him couch-surfing at fan's home, documenting his delusional quest to revive his career after squandering fame through partying and disappearing from spotlight. Starring Lane Compton as John Cooper, with Trevor Goober, Ilana Kohanchi, and Dustin Ybarra. Blurring the line between a real doc and a mock doc featuring real comedians like Rob Corddry, Brian Posehn, Doug Benson, and TikTok sensation Mads Lewis. This doesn't look like the funniest comedy, but it does looks extra wacky & amusing enough to enjoy. Check it out below. // Continue Reading ›
- Zoey Deutch & Nick Robinson in 'Voicemails for Isabelle' Movie Trailer (May 19, 2026)
"This is her way of healing!" Netflix has revealed an official trailer for another cute romantic comedy out soon called Voicemails for Isabelle, debuting to watch starting in June in the middle of this summer. From the same director of Scrambled, this time she has Zoey Deutch starring as the woman at the center of this awkward meet cute romance story. The concept reminds me a bit of the 2007 romance P.S. I Love You with Gerard Butler or even the classic You've Got Mail (which they literally reference in this). Jill copes with her sister’s death by leaving her voicemails chronicling her chaotic life in San Francisco. When the number is unknowingly reassigned, an elusive Austin real estate agent begins receiving the hilariously confessional messages. They meet up in San Fran and the rest you'll have to discover only in the movie. Starring Zoey Deutch, Nick Robinson, Harry Shum Jr., Lukas Gage, Ciara Bravo, Megan Danso, Gil Bellows, Toby Sandeman, Spencer Lord; and Nick Offerman. This one looks sweet and sappy enough to watch. // Continue Reading ›
- Excellent Final Trailer for Nicolas Cage's 'Spider-Noir' Streaming Series (May 19, 2026)
"You're an investigator... Investigate!" Here we go, Spider-Man fans! Prime Video debuted one final official trailer for the Spider-Noir series debuting soon for streaming. This is looking excellent! I'm ready to watch. Adapted directly from the real Marvel comics – from Spider-Man: Noir #1 (2009). This vintage spin on Spidey also appeared in the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse movie, though it's not directly connect to that story. An aging, down on his luck private investigator in 1930s New York City is forced to grapple with his past life as the city's one and only superhero. Nicolas Cage stars in this mini-series as as Ben Reilly / The Spider – an older, grizzled version of Spider-Man from an alternate world based on 1930s NYC. The cast includes Lamorne Morris as Robbie Robertson, Li Jun Li as Cat Hardy, Karen Rodriguez, Lukas Haas, Abraham Popoola, Andrew Lewis Caldwell, Jack Mikesell, Jack Huston as Flint Marko, plus Brendan Gleeson as Silvermane. We posted the other official trailer last month and with this final glimpse of footage (and the "Back to Black" song), I'm all in. Ready to watch this! Lookin' like just the right mix of noir, super-villains, and reluctant ol' PI Spidey coming back to save the town again. Fire it up below. // Continue Reading ›
