THE nationalisms are poison. There are at least a couple of films at the 2026 Cannes festival to remind us of this. Surely Fatherland Of Pawel Pawlikowski, account of the return in 1949, and to the divided homeland, of Thomas Mann in the company of his daughter Erika, but perhaps also Heimsuchung by Volker Schlondorff collective story of the search for a safe place while the history of the world spares none of the destinies at stake.
Cannes Film Festival 2026: Spain and Iran light up the Croisette
Never before has there been more talk about this edition of Cannes Absent countries (ours) and others hypervisible. And if inevitably it is France, host country and home of important cinema, which is the most represented nation, the one to want to draw conclusions on what they are at this moment the most vital cinemas, certainly Iran and Spain they have shown that there is a good wind blowing in those parts.
With three films in the main competition, Amarga Navidad by Pedro Almodovar, El ser querido by Rodrigo Sorogoyen e The Black Bola by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, Spain confirms the energy that brought two films to the Croisette in the last edition, Romeria by Carla Simón e Sirat by Olivier Laxe. Laxe finally took home the Jury Prize and, a few months later, nominations for the Oscar and the Golden Globes.
Leonardo Sbaraglia in “Amarga Navidad”. (Warner Bros.)
In the interview you agreed to us for Karmathe film by Guillaume Canet, Leonardo SbaragliaArgentine actor loaned to the cinema of Madrid and protagonist of Almodóvar’s filmconfirms: «It’s about time these awards arrived. Until not long ago Spain was mainly known for the good horror films it produced, or for comedies, now there is a great variety. There are established authors and new authors. I’m happy to be part of it.”
The theaters in Spain are filled with arthouse cinema
At home the public responds to the new course: how it records Liberationif up to victory for Carla Simón’s Alcarràs at the Berlinale in 2022an arthouse film could not aspire to gross more than 500 thousand euros, now it can even exceed two million. The filmmakers present at the festival this year, alone, they can aspire to bring in at least 10 million at the domestic box office. And the financiers (including telecommunications companies who have the obligation, as in France, to invest in national products) must have understood the hint, if they begin to prefer authors such as Laxe, Sorogoyen and the directors of La Bola Negra to the co-productions of popular comedies.
“Living Twice, Dying Thrice”.
The situation for the Iranians is very different. But six films present in the various sections of the festival, 4 long films and two short films, they say about the attention with which cinema looks at what is happening in that part of the world.
Not many people want to talk openly about the current situation. Asghar Farhadi, author of Histoires parallelesFrench film with a stellar cast (Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Isabelle Huppert, Pierre Niney), who, unlike his other colleagues, was not forced to choose exile, he always granted interviews in tandem with Isabelle Huppert (and we don’t know a better bodyguard).
Karim Lakzadeh, 39, filmed his film in Iran Living Twice, Dying Thriceblack comedy which recalls the first Jim Jarmusch, starring two kids who, having survived an explosion, wonder whether to reassure everyone by appearing to be in good health or pass off as dead, so that their families can pocket compensation.
“Rehearsals for a Revolution”.
Cannes Film Festival 2026: ACID, independent section looking for new talents
Selected by ACID, a section that also searches for new talents (and often discovers them). Dans la guule de l’ogre by Mahsa Karampour, documentary that compares the destinies of the author who is about to become a French citizen, afterwards an exile of over twenty years, and that of his brother, who emigrated to America to follow the dream of becoming a rock musician. «A scattered family, like many Iranian families» declared the director. His mother, a left-wing militant who had hoped for the revolution, still lives in Tehran.
And he also talks about revolution Pegah Ahangarani’s film, presented among the Séances spéciales, in official selection, Rehearsals for a Revolution. Daughter of director Manijeh Hekmat, the author had already been sentenced to 18 months in prison for speaking to the foreign press; she was in Amsterdam, at a festival, when the Women’s Life Freedom Movement took to the streets and, threatened with arrest again, she decided not to return.
Forty years of post-revolutionary Iran in the gaze of a woman who has always only served in the opposition, a chronicle that alternates great hopes and bitter disappointments. And what it presents an entirely Iranian concept, the yād, which cannot be translated into a single word, which brings together memory and the way in which the past returns to mark the present.
Tehran’s cinema, scattered, like its people, is alive and resistant.
