Cannes film festival 2026 lineup: first reactions - The Screen Podcast

In this week’s episode of The Screen Podcast, the team reacts to this year's Cannes Official Selection, which was unveiled by Thierry Fremaux and Iris Knobloch in Paris earlier today.

Breaking down the list of titles with host Wendy Mitchell is Screen's editor-in-chief Matt Mueller and senior international critic Wendy Ide.

The trio pick out the films they are excited about, plus some of the trends from this year's list.

"My metric for an exciting Cannes line-up is the Cannes queue punch-up metric," says Ide. "So how many films are going to generate a punch-up when people are so desperate to get in there, the tension boils over. And I think we've definitely got quite a few. I would say that Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland and Cristian Mungiu's Fjord have punch-up potential."

"For me, what's interesting are the rising talents," adds Mitchell. "Lucas Dhont is his second competition slot [with Coward]. I think that this is going to be a really interesting one for him because Thierry described it as pure cinema. And that's quite an accolade coming from Thierry, isn't it?"

The podcast also delves into the titles that may have missed out and what still could be added by Fremaux. Plus they predict potential some future awards contenders from the selection, and explain what happened to the Brits.