2026 Cannes Film Festival: John Travolta to make directorial debut

Tales of war, grief and artificial intelligence join a race for the 2026 Cannes Film Festival's top prize from Tuesday.

According to Reuters news agency, the glitzy festival, ‌long a launch pad for Hollywood franchises such as Indiana Jones and Top Gun, will not host any blockbusters this year, nor the large-scale red‑carpet rollouts that typically accompany them, as risk‑averse studios grow more cautious.

There will still be plenty of big names on show, among them Barbra Streisand, winning a lifetime achievement award, ​and John Travolta, making his directorial debut.

There are 22 films in competition for the Palme d'Or prize awarded at the closing ceremony on ​May 23, with independent cinema heavyweights including Pedro Almodovar and Laszlo Nemes.

Iran's Asghar Farhadi and Japan's Ryusuke Hamaguchi of "Drive My Car" fame both have French-language family dramas: "Parallel Tales," with Isabelle Huppert as a nosy neighbour, and "All Of a Sudden," about elderly care, respectively.

From ​the U.S., "Paper Tiger," directed by James Gray, will bring Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver back together after 2019's "Marriage Story," while Rami Malek stars ​in a drama about HIV/AIDS in 1980s New York City in Ira Sachs' "The Man I Love."

Two past winners, Romania's Cristian Mungiu and Japan's Hirokazu Kore‑eda, are ‌vying for ⁠a second Palme d'Or.

Kore-eda, who won with "Shoplifters" in 2018, will explore grief and artificial intelligence in "Sheep In The Box."

Mungiu returns with "Fjord," a family drama set in a remote Norwegian village starring Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan. For the Romanian director, selection alone was already a prize.