Cannes does not have a surprising, but a divisive winner this year. The drama Fjord won the Golden Palm on Saturday evening, the top prize at the most prestigious film festival in the world. The Romanian Cristian Mungiu is therefore only the tenth director to win the Palme d’Or twice: in 2007 he received the prize for his abortion drama. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.
Fjord follows a devout Romanian-Norwegian couple (Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve) who go to live on an idyllic fjord, but soon get into trouble with the Norwegian authorities. They abuse their children, the progressive Norwegians believe: they use corporal punishment and teach them that homosexuality is not okay. But the Gheorghiu’s appeal to freedom of culture and religion: shouldn’t that apply in Norway? It leads to a clash of values that is fought out at the highest levels of the judiciary and the polarized media landscape.
The film was not appreciated by some critics: is Mungiu now claiming that Norway, despite all its progressive values, still dogmatically enforces a culture on outsiders? During a press conference in Cannes, Mungiu was combative. He sees two groups that have ‘been radicalized to such an extent’ that a middle ground can no longer be found. He based this story on extensive research.
Fjord will cause even more commotion – the film is, Mungiu also knows, doomed to be hijacked by radical right groups with a victim complex. But that alone makes it one of the most interesting and controversial films of the year. The film also won the FIPRESCI press award.
Minotaur
The selection of the Cannes Film Festival this year was slightly less impressive than that of 2025, with later Oscar candidates such as Sentimental Value, It Was Just an Accident and The Secret Agent. This was not only because Americans largely skipped the festival this year, but also because old masters such as Asghar Farhadi, Pedro Almodóvar and Hirokazu Kore-eda disappointed. But during the course of the festival, plenty of films premiered that will undoubtedly move on to the Oscars.
Like Minotaurwinner of the Grand Prix (second prize) of the festival. The thriller marked a triumphant return for Russia’s leading dissident director, Andrei Zvyagintsev, who won the Jury Prize nine years ago for Loveless. In 2022, Zvyagintsev almost died of Covid in a clinic in Hannover; his lungs were 90 percent damaged and he could no longer feel his limbs. In the hospital he heard about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which plays a leading role in his latest film.
Minotaur is a reworking of Claude Chabrol’s thriller La Femme infidèle (1969), but moved to a Russian provincial town during the early days of the “special military operation” in Ukraine. Businessman Gleb finds out his wife is having an affair; in the meantime, he has to send fourteen employees to the mayor’s front. Zvyagintsev ruthlessly portrays Russia: criminal, disillusioned and paralyzed with fear.
Fatherland
The festival’s most important prizes went to the two most contemporary films. The rest of the major prizes went to historical films – a trend at this year’s festival.
The screenplay prize went to war film A Man of His Time (Notre Salut). In it, Henri Marre, blinded by ambition, sees opportunities in Nazi-occupied France and gets a job with the Vichy regime. The directing prize was awarded to two films – the jury could not choose this year. Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski won for his acclaimed Fatherlandan elegant, minimalist black-and-white film about the German Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann, who travels from West to East Germany with his daughter Erika in 1949. While Mann gives distant, intellectual speeches about Goethe, a new balance of power is sought around him and his addicted and embittered son struggles with the shadow of his lauded and narcissistic father.
The other winners were Spanish directors Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, for the ambitious Spanish film La Bola Negra. It was the surprise of this edition. After the premiere, the film received a sixteen-minute standing ovation: the longest applause of the festival.
The film ingeniously interweaves storylines about the Spanish Civil War and Spanish queer characters in 1932, 1937 and 2017. Red Line is an unfinished play by the Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca. After all the drawn-out drama that the main competition had to offer, this shamelessly romantic film hit like a hammer blow. Queer storylines popped up in countless films this year. The jury of the Queer Palm, the prize for a film with LGBTQ+ or feminist themes, could choose from a record number of 21 films.
To many people’s surprise, the prize for best actor went to the protagonists of the queer war film Cowardinstead of favorite Javier Bardem who very convincingly portrayed a toxic father The Beloved.
Cowardby Belgian director Lukas Dhont, is set during the First World War, where the trenches, in addition to enormous horror, also offer a kind of freedom for two young men. They are allowed to temporarily work on (drag) performances to boost the morale of their fellow soldiers. Actors Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne emotionally jumped into each other’s arms during the ceremony – as so often in the film.
The prize for best actress also went to two people. Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto jointly won it Soudainin which they play the stubborn director of a nursing home and a terminally ill Japanese playwright. The film follows their budding friendship and conversations from philosophy to capitalism over more than three hours.
Travolta’s beret
When Europeans start making films about the World Wars en masse, then you know something is going on. Many critics saw parallels with the present in this year’s historical films. There was a lot of politics during this edition of Cannes. Also off-screen: actor Sebastian Stan criticized Donald Trump, actress Cate Blanchett lamented the early death of #MeToo, and the closing ceremony focused on victims in Lebanon and Gaza. But the festival was not taken over by politics for long. In the first week, it was more about John Travolta’s beret than the small number of women in the main competition.
Ultimately, it was an internal battle within the film industry that turned the festival into a battlefield. The CEO of France’s largest film financier, Canal+, announced at the festival that he “no longer wants to collaborate” with the signatories of an open letter criticizing the growing influence of the radical right in the French film industry. If it is implemented, it will have enormous consequences for French filmmakers. No French films on the Croisette next year?
