All the Films in Competition at Cannes 2026, Ranked from Best to Worst

The Cannes Film Festival competition included twenty-two films contending for the Palme d'Or, but the overall year was viewed as less strong than the previous edition. The jury, led by Park Chan-wook, awarded the Palme d'Or to Fjord, a complex social drama by Cristian Mungiu set in a remote Norwegian town. The win marked Mungiu’s first work outside Romania and largely in a different language. Another film, All of a Sudden by Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, is set mostly in Paris and also involves working outside the director’s home context. Several entries appeared to echo each other thematically, including films about gay male soldiers during wartime and films centered on a French mindset.

"The jury, led by the South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook, nonetheless found plenty to like. On Saturday, they awarded the Palme d'Or to "Fjord," a complex, critically divisive social drama from the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu that takes place in a remote Norwegian town. It marked the filmmaker's first time working outside his home country, and predominantly in a different language—also the case for another entry in the competition, the Japanese director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi's "All of a Sudden," which is set mostly in Paris."

"Last year's Cannes Film Festival competition was the strongest in recent memory. I remember it, perhaps a touch rosily, as an almost ceaseless parade of triumphs: this was where we caught our first glimpse of "Sirāt," "Sound of Falling," "The Secret Agent," "Resurrection," "The Mastermind," and "It Was Just an Accident," the eventual winner of the top prize, the Palme d'Or. The extraordinary strength of that lineup seems even more pronounced following the conclusion of a 2026 festival that, by consensus and by comparison, was a bit of a disappointment."

"That isn't the only example of two selections seeming to speak to each other. The experience of watching so many movies over a twelve-day period coaxes your brain into a heightened state of pattern recognition, and you might begin to wonder if certain films have been programmed based on narrative and thematic similarities. There are two films, "Coward" and "The Black Ball," which focus on the experiences of gay male soldiers during wartime. Two films, "A Man of His Time" and "Moulin," immerse us in the mind-set of a Frenc"

Read at The New Yorker