Winners pose on stage with their awards at the end of the closing ceremony of the 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on Sunday.SAMEER AL-DOUMY/AFP/Getty Images
On May 25, The Globe and Mail’s film editor Barry Hertz answered reader questions about the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, the biggest stars and what’s in store for the future of film.
Hertz attended the festival in France and watched 25 movies over nine days and wrote about everything from a Fast & Furious family reunion to the plight of Ukrainian filmmakers.
Readers asked about the best films to come out of the festival, what the Canadian presence looked like and why every movie gets a standing ovation. Here are some highlights from the Q&A.
The movies at Cannes
What were some of the best movies at Cannes?
Barry Hertz: I’d have to say my top films included: Fjord, All of a Sudden, The Man I Love, Paper Tiger, Minotaur, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, and Fatherland. Watch for all of them to make the rounds at film fests this fall. Teenage Sex and Death even has a theatrical release date set for this summer.
Dozens of movies are screening this year at the famed Cannes Film Festival in the French Riviera, with more than 20 competing for the top prize of the Palmes d'Or. Globe film editor Barry Hertz watched 25 movies over nine days – here are his top three picks.
Were there any movies you had high hopes for that didn’t deliver?
Hertz: Almost too many. There were so many prestigious filmmakers heading into Cannes this year that perhaps my expectations were too high. I found that the new films from such masters as Hirokazu Kore-eda, Asghar Farhadi, Pedro Almodovar all fell short of expectations.
Tilda Swinton, left, poses with Renate Reinsve, Cristian Mungiu, winner of the Palme d'Or for 'Fjord' and Sebastian Stan during the awards ceremony at Cannes, on Saturday.Andreea Alexandru/The Associated Press
What was the most underrated film you saw at the festival, and a filmmaker to watch for in the future?
Hertz: While the drama The Man I Love didn’t receive any prizes from the Cannes jury, I thought that director Ira Sachs’ portrait of a NYC actor in the ’80s who is suffering from AIDS (though the disease itself is never mentioned) was beautiful and deftly avoided any clichés. That movie doesn’t yet have distribution, but watch out for it on the fall festival circuit, including, I hope, TIFF.
It Was Just An Accident won the Palme d’Or last year but didn’t really take home any other major awards. Does winning big at Cannes help a film’s prospects and do you think Fjord will be any different?
Hertz: It does, but it all depends on how the rest of the year shakes out, and what films come out of the woodwork in the fall season, either because they chose to skip Cannes or were not ready to be submitted in time for consideration. I think Fjord is, at this point, guaranteed at least a nomination for Best International Film at the 2027 Oscars. But will it go further than that? We’ll have to see what the rest of the year delivers.
Winners pose on stage with their awards at the end of the closing ceremony of Cannes, on Saturday.ANTONIN THUILLIER/AFP/Getty Images
The festival
What does Cannes look like as a film critic from the inside? What was it like covering the festival?
Hertz: It is an intense kind of gauntlet, though the best kind. From the moment I land in Nice and make my way into Cannes, it’s a marathon of screenings and interviews and meetings and receptions and networking opportunities and panels – and of course, then writing. It’s all incredibly stimulating and exciting and fun, but it also meant that I was averaging about 3.5 hours a sleep a night for nine days straight.
Standing ovations have long been a hallmark of the Cannes Film Festival, running May 12 to 23 this year. The Globe's film editor, Barry Hertz, explains how the length of a movie's applause can signal its success.
Why does every movie get a standing ovation?
Hertz: Every movie that plays inside the Grand Lumiere theatre inside the Palais – which is the festival’s main hub – gets a standing ovation because the festival is practically engineered around delivering such a reception. At the end of every world premiere, at least those of the big competition films that get a black-tie screening at the Grand Lumiere, the filmmakers and their stars stand up, and the cameras are trained on them. Unless a film is really bad, there will be at least a smattering of polite applause and a standing ovation. How long that ovation lasts and how hearty the applause is determines the real measure of a film’s worth.
I’ll say that the world premiere of Farhadi’s Parallel Tales received such a tepid response that I knew the film was dead then and there. On the other hand, the audience was particularly hearty when it came to James Gray’s Paper Tiger.
Why did you call Cannes “The Olympics of film”?
Hertz: Because just like the Olympic Games, Cannes is where the world’s powers send their top talents, though in this case it’s film and not athletics. It’s where the top people in their field come to show off their stuff, and any country that can claim gold, in this case the Cannes’ Palme d’Or, is going to be remembered on the world stage.
With the talks of mergers and less films coming to theatres, what purpose can a festival like Cannes do to bring some energy back into movies?
Hertz: For a week and a half, a good deal of the international press train their eyes on Cannes. To have any spotlight on the world of cinema, especially from a festival that puts such a high degree of emphasis on the theatrical experience (no streamers are allowed to put their films into competition at Cannes, unless those streamers guarantee the film gets a wide theatrical release in France, which Netflix certainly does not), is invaluable to spreading the message that seeing movies in theatres matters. As a cultural act, as an economic one, even a political one. No other festival in the world guarantees such a high profile and wide coverage.
In Cannes, a new cultural world order emerges
Moving away from the U.S.
You wrote that the festival is trying to distance itself from the U.S. and Hollywood. How is that going and are North American audiences ready and hungry for more international films?
Hertz: I think that North American audiences are certainly ready for more international films. Witness the box-office success of last year’s No Other Choice (Korea), Sentimental Value (Norway), The Secret Agent (Brazil), It Was Just an Accident (France by way of Iran) – all of which first premiered at Cannes in 2025.