Filmmakers at the Top of Their Craft

The 22 films in this year’s Official Competition showcase the breadth of cinema – period pieces, comedies, genre, anime, thrillers, magic realism, love stories, a self-love story, and a revisionist western… these films show off just how diverse great cinema is in 2026. Each film is beautifully crafted and delivers on its own artistic promise; and together they show filmmakers from around the world, working at the top of their craft.

Kornél Mundruczó’s At the Sea features Amy Adams leading an impressive ensemble in a sharply observed study of a woman who returns home after rehab and must test whether family bonds can be repaired. Family also features prominently in many other films in Competition, serving as a prism through which we see larger social and political dynamics. Eva Trobisch’s Etwas ganz Besonderes portrays a family riven by tensions in a Germany still shaped by the legacy of division between east and west. Anthony Chen’s emotional Wo Men Bu Shi Mo Sheng Ren is set in contemporary Singapore, as two generations struggle to improve their lives while their unity as a family is tested.

In Leyla Bouzid’s À voix basse, a funeral in Tunisia becomes the starting point for a detective story that is both personal and political, built around secrets and a cultural divide emerging within a family. Living between two worlds is also explored in Alain Gomis’ expansive Dao; celebrants, mourners, newlyweds and revellers come together in a series of ceremonies set in Paris and Guinea-Bissau.

An interest in music, art and movement pulses through a number of Competition titles. The emotional toll of exile and the nature of artistic genius are explored in Geneviève Dulude-de Celles’ satisfyingly complex, Bulgarian-set Nina Roza. Creative genius is central to Everybody Digs Bill Evans, with Grant Gee bringing great depth to his intimate portrait of the renowned jazz musician grappling with grief and addiction. Directing duo Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel blend elements of fact and fiction in The Loneliest Man in Town, as we are drawn into the precise and pensive world of blues musician Al Cook as he resists gentrification. Angela Schanelec’s formal precision, dry wit and beautiful choreography of bodies and words in Meine Frau weint delivers us to a place beyond the ordinary.

Period-set stories provide a mirror for our time in three films competing for the Golden Bear. In the aftermath of the devastating 30 Years War, Sandra Hüller’s central character in Markus Schleinzer’s Rose seeks to build a life of substance in the face of restrictions for women on access to land. The young Aboriginal siblings of Warwick Thornton’s Wolfram seek an equal opportunity to build the life they deserve in the sun-bleached outback in 1930s Australia. In Dust, Anke Blondé’s 1990s-set propulsive tech-boom thriller, two men watch their empire collapse in real time.

Authoritarian tensions divide even the closest of allies in a duo of distinct and stylish Turkish-set films. Emin Alper’s gripping Kurtuluş explores the widening rifts of religious and tribal allegiance in two villages separated by disputed land and long-standing power struggles. Escalating state oppression fuels family tensions in Ilker Çatak’s Gelbe Briefe a complex, compelling exploration of marriage, politics and artistic integrity.