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Will the stars align for Cannes? That was a key question heading into Thursday’s unveiling of the Cannes Film Festival 2026 lineup, which took shape during its unveiling in Paris. The answer is a bit of a mixed bag: arthouse stars – yes, Hollywood stars – not so much. As things stand right now, Cannes 2026 promises a mix of well-known and emerging arthouse voices, but maybe less star wattage than recent editions of the world’s biggest film festival, even though French superstars Léa Seydoux and Catherine Deneuve alone will bring two movies to the competition program.
Other big names starring in Cannes 2026 films include Rami Malek (in Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love), Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan (in Cristian Mungiu’s English-language debut Fjord), Isabelle Huppert (in Iranian auteur Asghar Farhadi’s Parallel Tales), Sandra Hüller (in Fatherland from Paweł Pawlikowski), and Javier Bardem (in Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beloved). However, organizers acknowledged a lack of Hollywood studio fare lined up for this year’s edition of the festival.
That said, arthouse darlings galore will head to the south of France to premiere their new films on the Croisette.
Among them are Sachs, Pedro Almodóvar, Farhadi, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Marie Kreutzer, László Nemes, Volker Schlöndorff, Jane Schoenbrun, Mungiu, Lukas Dhont, Pawlikowski, and Ryûsuke Hamaguchi.
Artistic director Thierry Frémaux, with president Iris Knobloch by his side, discussed the official selection, the popular Un Certain Regard sidebar, and other parts of the program for the 79th edition, also highlighting that five of the 21 competition films unveiled, or about a quarter, are from female directors.
The Cannes team’s lineup isn’t complete and will add more titles in the coming weeks. Among the names suggested for this year’s festival but not included in the initial lineup are Joel Coen, Takashi Miike, Lars von Trier, Radu Jude, Werner Herzog, and James Gray, whose film Paper Tiger, featuring Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, and Miles Teller, would have added significant star power to the Croisette.
This news has been edited based on a report from hollywoodreporter.com, while preserving the key facts from the original source.
