Photo Credits: Lauraleedooley, CC BY 2.0
Inside the 79th Festival — where John Travolta got a trophy before his film, Sharon Stone stole a premiere, and the jury can’t agree on lunch
CANNES — The red carpet is supposed to be 60 metres long. This year it feels longer, mostly because everyone is stopping halfway to take a selfie, fix a heel, or whisper to a publicist.
The 79th Cannes Film Festival, which runs 12–23 May under jury president Park Chan-wook, was sold as a return to “cinema first.” In practice, the cinema has been excellent — and the sideshows have been better.
The three Palmes nobody expected
Cannes traditionally hands out one Honorary Palme d’Or per edition. This year it handed out three, and the timing raised eyebrows.
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Peter Jackson opened the festival with a 10-minute standing ovation and a gold-plated tribute, joking he came for the rosé. Standard.
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John Travolta was different. He received his Honorary Palme on 17 May, minutes before the world premiere of his directorial debut Propeller One-Way Night Coach. Festival delegate Thierry Frémaux admitted backstage it was added “on short notice.” Distributors whispered it was the price of securing the film for Cannes Premiere — and of getting Travolta to stay for photocalls.
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Barbra Streisand will close the festival on 23 May. She hasn’t had a film here since 1996, but she has a new Netflix documentary and, crucially, a suite at the Carlton.
The triple crown has left purists grumbling that Cannes is becoming the Oscars’ honorary reel. Insiders call it smart programming: with no Top Gun or Marvel in Competition, star power had to come from somewhere.
Red-carpet royalty
The most photographed night wasn’t the opening — it was the Fjord premiere on 18 May. Cristian Mungiu’s bleak Romanian-Norwegian drama brought out an unlikely trio: Daisy Edgar-Jones in liquid silver Gucci, Sharon Stone, 68, in a tuxedo gown with opera gloves, and jury member Demi Moore in pale-blue archival Dior.
Stone, who hadn’t walked Cannes since 2014, paused at the top of the steps, turned to the photographers and mouthed “still here.” The clip has 12 million views on TikTok. Moore, meanwhile, has become the jury’s unofficial style diplomat, attending every evening screening despite morning deliberations with Park, Chloé Zhao and Stellan Skarsgård.
Elsewhere, the Bitter Christmas premiere turned into a Spanish reunion. Pedro Almodóvar arrived arm-in-arm with Rossy de Palma and Bárbara Lennie, while Juliette Binoche — not in the film — showed up “just to support Pedro,” then stayed for the after-party until 2 a.m.
Gossip from the beach
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The jury lunch fight. On day three, witnesses at the Majestic’s beach restaurant say Park Chan-wook and Paul Laverty had a spirited debate — in Korean, English and very expressive hands — over whether a three-hour-plus film (Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden) should win on endurance alone. No plates were thrown. The rosé was.
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The yacht that wasn’t. Leonardo DiCaprio was rumored to have rented the $3-million-a-week Faith for the full fortnight. He was spotted once, at the Hotel du Cap, then vanished. The yacht, according to port logs, spent the week docked in Antibes hosting a crypto conference.
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The dress code rebellion. After last year’s “no naked dresses” memo, this year’s unofficial theme is “sheer with a statement.” Coco Rocha wore a fully transparent Jean Paul Gaultier couture with pasties shaped like Palme leaves. Security tried to stop her for a “wardrobe check.” She kept walking.
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The Almodóvar confession. At his press conference, Almodóvar admitted Bitter Christmas is “the film where I’ve been cruelest with myself,” then promptly blamed his assistant for stealing his plot ideas. The assistant, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, who plays his assistant in the film, stood up and bowed. The room laughed; Spanish journalists wrote it down verbatim.
What the films are saying
Beneath the gossip, the Competition is unusually introspective. Of 22 titles, seven are in the running for the Queer Palm — a record. Only two American directors made the main slate (James Gray’s Paper Tiger and Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love), prompting The Wrap to ask, “Does this festival need Hollywood?”
Early breakouts, according to buyers, are Hamaguchi’s marathon All of a Sudden, Pawel Pawlikowski’s post-war Fatherland, and Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma in Un Certain Regard — which earned the week’s loudest midnight screams.
The verdict so far
Cannes 2026 feels smaller, older, and more European than the post-COVID editions. There are fewer private jets, more train arrivals. The biggest applause lines have come not from superheroes but from a French Resistance biopic (Moulin by László Nemes) and a film about a director who can’t write (Bitter Christmas).
And the gossip? It’s doing what gossip always does here: filling the space between screenings, reminding everyone that for all its talk of art, Cannes remains the world’s most glamorous company town.
As one veteran publicist put it over a lukewarm Bellini at the Petit Majestic: “The films will win the prizes. The stories will win the summer.”
