The 2026 Cannes Film Festival concluded with a slate of awards that underscored the continued prominence of European auteurs and internationally focused storytelling, with Romanian director Cristian Mungiu securing the Palme d’Or for Fjord, a drama examining cultural and ideological divisions within contemporary Europe.

The victory marked a return to Cannes’ top prize for Mungiu, who previously won the Palme d’Or nearly two decades ago for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. His latest film centers on a Romanian information technology engineer portrayed by Sebastian Stan. The character, a religious and socially conservative professional, finds himself navigating tensions between Romanian cultural traditions and the more secular social environment of Norway.

According to the film’s narrative, Norwegian authorities become involved in private family matters in ways that contrast with expectations held by the Romanian protagonists. The story explores differing interpretations of family autonomy, religious belief and state intervention across European societies.

Mungiu employs a restrained visual style and procedural storytelling techniques that have become associated with his work, using personal conflict as a vehicle for examining broader cultural questions.The film’s selection for the Palme d’Or signaled support from the festival jury for narratives addressing divisions within Europe, particularly those involving competing social, religious and political perspectives.

The award also reinforced Mungiu’s standing among the continent’s most prominent filmmakers.While Fjord received the festival’s highest honor, other films attracted significant attention during the awards ceremony. Among the most notable was Minotaur by Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, which received the Grand Prix, traditionally regarded as the festival’s second-highest award.

The film was described as a political and social allegory examining violence, denial and power in contemporary Russia. Through its fusion of personal experiences and broader political themes, Minotaur emerged as one of the festival’s most discussed entries. Its recognition by the jury reflected continued interest in films that address political realities through intimate human stories.

The Jury Prize, effectively the festival’s third-ranking award, was presented to The Dreamed Adventure by German director Valeska Grisebach. The film follows a Bulgarian archaeologist confronting historical injustices and unresolved legacies in the Balkans.

Its selection highlighted the jury’s interest in works examining memory, identity and historical accountability within Europe.Grisebach’s film employs an unconventional narrative structure and measured storytelling style. The award positioned the production among the festival’s most significant artistic achievements and is likely to increase international attention for the film beyond its Cannes premiere.

Another major winner was Fatherland by Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski, who shared the Best Director prize. The film examines the return of German novelist and Nobel laureate Thomas Mann to postwar Germany following his exile in California during the Second World War.

The story focuses on Mann’s journey alongside his daughter Erika and explores questions of national identity, memory and reconciliation in the aftermath of conflict. The production benefited from performances by actors Hanns Zischler and Sandra Hüller, both of whom play central roles in the historical drama.

Pawlikowski shared the directing honor with Spanish filmmakers Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi for The Black Ball. The film presents a multi-layered exploration of queer identity and history inspired by the work of Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca.

The dual recognition reflected the jury’s willingness to honor projects employing very different approaches to storytelling. While Fatherland is rooted in historical biography and political memory, The Black Ball uses a broader and more expansive narrative structure to address themes of identity, culture and social change.

The Best Screenplay award went to Notre Salut, directed by Emmanuel Marre. The film recounts the story of Henri Marre, the director’s great-grandfather, who served as a minor official in the Vichy-controlled zone of France following the country’s defeat by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

By examining a family connection to a controversial historical period, the screenplay explores questions of collaboration, responsibility and historical memory. The award recognized the film’s ability to engage with difficult historical material through a personal narrative framework.

In the acting categories, Japanese actress Tao Okamoto and Belgian actress Virginie Efira shared the Best Actress award for their performances in All of a Sudden by Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi.The film follows the relationship between a French care-home supervisor and a Japanese stage director.

Its narrative examines emotional connection across cultural boundaries while also depicting the everyday realities of caring for elderly people. The performances of Okamoto and Efira were recognized for bringing contrasting emotional styles to the story, with one emphasizing restraint and the other a more overt emotional register.

The Best Actor prize was jointly awarded to Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne for their roles in Coward, directed by Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont. Set during the First World War, the film tells the story of two Belgian soldiers who develop a romantic relationship amid the conflict.

The recognition of Coward and The Black Ball highlighted the prominence of LGBTQ themes at this year’s festival, particularly stories focused on recovering experiences that have historically received limited attention in mainstream narratives. Their inclusion among the major award winners reflected broader trends within contemporary international cinema toward revisiting overlooked histories and identities.

Taken together, the Cannes awards demonstrated the festival jury’s preference for films addressing historical memory, political divisions and cultural identity through character-driven narratives. From Mungiu’s examination of competing European values in Fjord to Zvyagintsev’s political allegory in Minotaur and Pawlikowski’s exploration of postwar Germany in Fatherland, the winning films engaged with questions extending beyond individual stories to broader social and historical concerns.

The results also reinforced Cannes’ role as a platform for established international filmmakers, many of whom continue to use personal narratives to explore larger political and cultural issues shaping contemporary societies.

Venezuelan-Canadian director Jorge Thielen Armand and Italian actor Asia Argento are using surrealist psychological thriller Death Has No Master to examine questions of ownership, historical violence and inherited trauma against the backdrop of contemporary Venezuela.

Premiering in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes, the film follows Caro, an Italian-Venezuelan woman played by Argento, who returns to Venezuela to reclaim a plantation inherited from her late father. The property remains occupied by caretakers who have continued living on the land, setting up a broader conflict over legitimacy, colonial legacy and power.

“The film has multiple layers of meaning,” Armand said ahead of the premiere. “Recent events only make those multitudes greater.”Armand said the project has taken on additional political resonance following recent developments in Venezuela and increased international involvement in the country.

The director referenced the deployment of US warships near Venezuela in August last year, officially linked by Washington to anti-narcotics operations, as filming began on the project.

He also referred to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by US authorities earlier this year amid longstanding allegations of corruption and human rights abuses against his administration.

“It’s very worrisome, what’s happening,” Armand said. “I think that the movie can speak to the collective darkness that Venezuelans feel, and the betrayal of domestic and international systems.”

The film revisits themes Armand previously explored in La Soledad, his 2016 feature debut set during Venezuela’s economic collapse. That earlier project blurred documentary and fiction while focusing on residents occupying a deteriorating mansion formerly owned by Armand’s family.

In Death Has No Master, Armand shifts perspective toward the descendants of property owners returning to spaces shaped by abandonment, displacement and class divisions. The story was partly inspired by recurring dreams the director experienced involving dark buildings, fragmented memories and disorientation.

“When I wake up, I think of home and everything I left behind,” Armand said. “So the film is that nightmare of going back, finding that the people and things you left behind are no longer there.”

The film places colonial imagery alongside modern industrial symbols. Cacao plantations and oil refineries operate as recurring visual motifs, linking Venezuela’s colonial history with contemporary struggles over resources and political control.

Argento described the filming process as emotionally consuming, saying she isolated herself in shooting locations to better inhabit the character’s psychological state.

“I drove myself pretty much insane,” she said. “And I had a lot of fear; something primal; something unspeakable that I think my character felt in going back there.”Argento said Caro’s memories of her abusive father intersected with aspects of her own personal history.

She is the daughter of Italian filmmaker Dario Argento and actor-screenwriter Daria Nicolodi, collaborators behind the influential horror film Suspiria.While Argento declined to detail specific parallels, she said the project resonated with her understanding of family inheritance and emotional trauma.

“It’s dealing with my own nightmares, and my own childhood, and the way I was brought up, and my own blood, and my inheritance,” she said.Argento also noted stylistic similarities between Death Has No Master and the Italian psychological thrillers associated with her parents’ generation of cinema, particularly the visual techniques of 1970s giallo films.

“This is like a serious Italian psychological thriller from the 70s, with the zooms and the way it’s shot,” she said after watching the completed film.

The central conflict of the story unfolds between Caro and Sonia, an Afro-Venezuelan caretaker played by Dogreika Tovar, who lives on the plantation with her son and asserts her own claim to the land.

A third figure, Johnny, an Indigenous associate connected to Caro’s father, further complicates the question of legitimacy.Armand said the film intentionally avoids presenting a clear moral hierarchy among its characters.

“I wanted to make something where nobody is a victim, per se,” he said.

According to the director, the conflict reflects overlapping systems of legality, morality and historical entitlement shaped by colonialism and economic power.

“There’s a legal, moral and historical conflict,” Armand said. “But these are notions that we’ve conceived as a society. In the end, land isn’t owned, ever. It’s just controlled by the use of force. It’s occupied until it’s not.”

French actor Juliette Binoche has built an international career over four decades working with some of world cinema’s most prominent directors, but the Oscar-winning performer says her first experience directing a feature documentary required her to abandon certainty, reputation and control.

Her directorial debut, In-I In Motion, premiered in New York at the Museum of Modern Art and revisits the physically and emotionally demanding dance collaboration she created with British choreographer Akram Khan in the late 2000s. Constructed from rehearsal footage filmed over several months, the documentary chronicles Binoche’s immersion into contemporary dance and the personal experiences that informed the project’s exploration of intimacy, fear and emotional dependence.

Ahead of the screening, Binoche acknowledged uncertainty over how audiences would respond to the film’s fragmented and non-linear structure.“This film isn’t going to hold your hand,” she said while discussing how to introduce the documentary to viewers.The project marks a significant departure from the screen performances that established Binoche as one of Europe’s most acclaimed actors.

After early recognition in Hail Mary, she achieved international prominence through films including The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The English Patient and Chocolat. Her later collaborations with directors such as Michael Haneke and Abbas Kiarostami reinforced her standing within international arthouse cinema.In In-I In Motion, however, Binoche appears outside the polished framework typically associated with established screen actors.

The documentary follows six months of rehearsals involving improvisation, physical exhaustion and repeated movement exercises designed to strip away performance habits and emotional restraint.“I wanted the audience to experience what it feels like to be in a process of creation,” Binoche said. “That’s not a red carpet. It’s searching.”She described the experience of working in an unfamiliar discipline as central to the project’s meaning.“Being a beginner meant to not know,” she said.

“It’s about orienting into a truth within you. It’s not about being confident, it’s about allowing yourself to be nothing.”The original stage production, In-I, premiered in London in 2007 and later toured internationally for more than 100 performances. The piece combined dance, theatre and spoken dialogue to depict the emotional trajectory of a relationship, moving from attraction and tenderness to conflict and separation.

Binoche and Khan developed the work through extended conversations with acting coach Susan Batson and improvisational exercises led by movement director Su-Man Hsu. The resulting performances incorporated themes of attachment, dependence and emotional violence.At the centre of the documentary is a sequence inspired by a violent assault Binoche experienced as a teenager.

During one climactic scene, staged against a blood-red installation created by artist Anish Kapoor, Binoche reenacts strangulation while suspended above the stage.The sequence drew from memories of a mugging she experienced as a young girl in Paris.“It became a big fight, and I was strangled,” Binoche said. “I said to him: ‘Go ahead, do it.’ And then he stopped because I said that.”Binoche rejected the suggestion that revisiting the attack was uniquely traumatic, instead linking her experience to broader patterns of violence affecting women.

“A lot of people go through it,” she said. “In France, the percentage of women who go through violence like this is huge.”The documentary was assembled from nearly 200 hours of rehearsal footage recorded by filmmaker Marion Stalens, Binoche’s sister. Binoche said the idea of turning the material into a film had existed for years, encouraged in part by late actor and director Robert Redford after he attended a performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2008.

“He repeated it several times,” Binoche said of Redford’s encouragement to adapt the performance for film.The project eventually moved forward after producers approached her several years ago asking whether she had a film she wanted to direct.Despite years spent working alongside major filmmakers, Binoche said she never previously felt urgency to direct because she already considered herself deeply involved in the creative process as an actor.

“As an actor, you’re so involved in the directing because you’re in the middle of it,” she said.Rather than imitating techniques from directors she worked with, Binoche said she absorbed a broader commitment to instinct and intuition. Over her career she has collaborated with filmmakers including Jean-Luc Godard and Leos Carax, whose 1986 film Mauvais Sang became one of her breakthrough performances.

“What I learned from most directors is that they follow their intuition,” she said.Binoche said the pursuit of artistic growth requires abandoning attachment to public image or professional status.“If you’re attached to status, I think you’re losing possible opportunities for art,” she said.The actor’s directorial debut arrives during a period of heightened visibility beyond acting roles. In 2025, Binoche served as president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, where Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi received the Palme d’Or for It Was Just An Accident.

During the festival, Binoche faced criticism after declining to answer questions about a public letter concerning Gaza and the film industry. Later that evening, she delivered a tribute during the opening ceremony to Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, whose life was the subject of a documentary screening at the festival.“They didn’t know what I was going to do in the evening,” Binoche said, reflecting on the controversy.

“I had a plan.”Binoche said the projects she continues to pursue are driven primarily by stories involving personal change and emotional transformation.“What I like in choosing a story, a script or a play is when there’s transformation,” she said. “Because I think we can transform.”