79th Cannes opens with limited Hollywood studio presence
moviesMay 15, 20261976
The 79th Festival de Cannes opened without major Hollywood studio blockbusters, favoring auteur films and restored classics. Only five of the 22 competition directors are women, two fewer than in 2025, and campaigners say France must break the film industry's glass ceiling. New films from Pedro Almodóvar, Asghar Farhadi, Paweł Pawlikowski, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, László Nemes, Nicolas Winding Refn and Quentin Dupieux join documentaries by Steven Soderbergh and Ron Howard on the program. That lineup matters because it foregrounds artistic prestige over box-office appeal, giving auteurs and restorations primary visibility and shaping which films attract distributors and awards attention.
