S Viswanath

“Critics Week remains deeply attentive to the unconventional paths taken by artists who revitalise storytelling and experiment with new cinematic languages. Every new generation contributes to shaping the history of cinema. Watching this evolution unfold is a captivating experience—it’s a continual source of joy to be immersed in the boundless realm of imagination,” Critics’ Week Team.

Films curated and featured under the Critics’ Week segment of international film festivals is an important component and much patronised programme. Films, so chosen and showcased under the Critics’ Week, is seen playing a pivotal role in providing a platform for underrepresented ones in global cinema.

The Critics’ Week, makes it a point not only prioritising films by and from women, non-Western or Hollywood directors in its selections, it also provides a launchpad for independent cinema, by providing exposure and practical support for debut and second features.

It is in this regard that La Semaine de la Critique (Critics’ Week), one of the oldest parallel section at the Cannes Film Festival, which formally birth in 1962, with the singular objective of showcasing debut and sophomore feature films, especially from hitherto undiscovered and emerging international talents, plays a vital role in fostering inclusivity for the emerging next generation of filmmakers talents.

The founding motivation centred on promoting innovative cinema from underrepresented regions and first-time directors, addressing gaps in the Cannes official lineup by prioritising artistic risk-taking over commercial appeal.

Running alongside the main film festival, this coveted, most anticipated and prestigious sidebar highlighting independent, innovative cinemas, which sees humungous response with submissions running over 3,000 sees a select handful of around a dozen films and equal number of short films being featured.

The parallel section, whose selection process, is managed by members of French Union of Film Critics (Syndicat Français de la Critique de Cinéma), in order to ensure high standard of quality, focusing on artistic merit and innovation rather than commercial potential, champions innovative, non-commercial, and auteur-driven cinema, often setting trends for the future of global cinema.

The selection process for La Semaine de la Critique, aka Critics’ Week, is overseen by the Syndicat Français de la Critique de Cinéma (SRFC), the French Union of Film Critics, through a rigorous review of submissions.

It is also significant to note that this year’s 2026 lineup which features an international selection includes for the first-time ever an animated film as the opening film in the form of Phuong Mai Nguyen’s In Waves.

The Critics’ Week’s curated picks were announced by the Cannes Film Festival General Delegate Ava Cahen, who listed out 11 debut and sophomore feature films, including seven in competition and four in special screenings, selected from 1,050 films that were watched.

Announcing the lineup Ava Cahen said the new edition highlights films that present “the world through the eyes of children, adolescents or young adults. What we found beautiful this year is that the world is in a bad way, but there is nonetheless in every film a will to resist together, with plenty of life, even in the dramas.”

The selected films vie for the Grand Prix AMI Paris of the Critics’ Week for Best Feature, the Jury’s French Touch Prize, the Louis Roederer Foundation Revelation Prize for Best Actress, and the Leitz Ciné Discovery Prize for Best Short Film and the Canal+ Award. Incidentally, all the selected feature films are also eligible for the prestigious Camera d’Or award for Best Debut which is open to all first films in Official Selection and the parallel sections at Cannes.

The feature films in the Critics Week Competition include A Girl Unknown by Zou Jing, The Station by Sara Ishaq, Dua by Blerta Basholli, Seis meses en el edificio rosa con azul by Bruno Santamaría Razo, La Gradiva by Marine Atlan, Tin Castle by Alexander Murphy and Viva by Aina Clotet. Those featuring as special screenings include The Hit by Julien Gaspar-Oliveri, Fuel in the Arteries by Pierre Le Gall, In Waves by Phuong Mai Nguen (Opening film) and Farewell, Cruel World by Félix de Givry (Closing film). The 65th edition of this parallel competition – the Critics Week runs from May 13 to 21, 2026.

Last year, saw the Grand Prix honour bagged by the Thai film A Useful Ghost, while the jury prize was picked by Imago, the first Chechen film to win an award in the history of the Cannes Film Festival.

In A Girl Unknown (Wu ming nü hai) Chinese woman filmmaker Zou Jing continuing her exploration of the Chinese society and drawing upon her own personal experience, spotlights on a young Chinese woman from 6 through to her 30s, living in three different families tracing the entire generations of abandoned girls in China from 1980s to 2000s in an intimate coming-of-age story that explores existential pain, self-discovery, and how one learns to love.

In Yemioni-Scottish woman filmmaker Sara Ishaw’s (The Station / Al Mahattah) described by the filmmaker as “an ode to the people of Yemen” and inspired by real life events following the director’s return to Yemen in 2015, we are drawn to the “microcosm of Yemini society” to a women-only fuel station in the segregated, war-torn hometown Sanaa, a major desert crossroads between Khartoum and Port Sudan, when Layal’s younger brother faces enlistment, she reunites with her estranged sister to save the one life they still can. The film, which offers a precise portrait of circulation as a condition of modern Sudanese life, maps a transient social world of arrivals, pauses, transactions, and departures, wherein the station appears as a threshold where aspiration and precarity, briefly coexist before dispersing again.

Through realistic visual narrative style Kosovo born woman filmmaker Blerta Basholli whose stories touch upon social and gender issues from the country where she was born and raised, Kosova, and beyond in Dua set amidst Prishtina, Kosovo, of late 1990s showcases how, 13-year-old Dua faces pressure to grow up amid rising Kosovo tensions. As violence nears and her family fractures, a bold friend the fearless girl, Maki, inspires her to find courage, resilience, and her own path to safety, as the two together form as a sort of female resistance.

Set in Mexico City of early 90s, Six Months In A Pink & Blue Building (Seis meses en el edificio rosa con azul )by Mexican filmmaker Bruno Santamaria Razo (whose work explores memory, secrets, and childhood) revolves around the filmmaker Bruno, who 30 years later reimagines the memory of what he could not understand as a 11 year old, and his growing feelings for his best friend Vladimir, is shocked and troubled with the announcement his father has HIV which sees his family sing and dance their pain away.

La Gradiva by French woman director Marine Atlan is about a group of French high-school students travel to Naples on a school trip to discover the ruins of Pompeii and the bodies petrified by Vesuvius in 79 AD. In this ghost town, they are suddenly overwhelmed by a dizzying descent whereby one by one, James, Toni, Suzanne, and their Latin teacher, Mrs Mercier, succumb to desire, anger, and despair—completely surrendering to them and losing everything. A hypnotic and authentic portrait of a generation set against the charged landscape of Pompeii, the trip becomes a rare moment when the force of youth meets a world frozen in time leading them toward an irreversible fracture.

Tin Castle or The Irish Travellers by Alexander Murphy is a documentary in which we encounter the large Irish family of O’Reillys living in a rundown mobile trailer stranded in the middle of the fields, where Pa, Lisa, and their brood of ten children weather the seasons in their tin castle, living on borrowed time. Under threat of eviction, their tenuous balance falters, yet – steadfast in their tradition – they resist. The children laugh, the dogs bark, the mobile home holds on…

Tin Castle is Murphy’s (whose work seeks to preserve the memory of vulnerable cultures within marginalised groups through stories rooted in the lives of young people in traditional communities, he explores legacy, displacement, and what is passed on through generations.) second feature documentary after 2025 Goodbye Sisters, about two Nepali sisters who leave Kathmandu for their native village to harvest the valuable caterpillar fungus, in the hope that the profits will change their lives.

The Spanish/Catalan drama Viva (Alive) by woman director Aina Clotet is set in a near future Catalonia where persistent droughts, mental health deterioration, and promises of life extension are concerns setting up the political agenda. Here we come across 40-year-old Nora, who, after coming face to face with death overcoming breast cancer is consumed by urgent need to feel alive resulting in her diving into passionate relationships with younger men. In this case, two very different men, Tom and Max, whose opposing natures reflect her own inner conflict. With neither filling the void, Nora is forced to face to confront a deeper fear driving her hunger for life.

If the above seven form the septet vying for the section’s Grand Prix AMI Paris of the Critics’ Week for Best Feature, the Jury’s French Touch Prize, awards, the remaining four as written below are privileged for the special screenings. Of course, all the 11 features are eligible for the prestigious Camera d’Or award for Best Debut open to all first films in Official Selection and the parallel sections at Cannes.

Now, The Hit (Stonewall / La Frappe) by Julien Gaspar-Oliveri, focusing on a family’s trauma and secrets, follows a brother and sister in the South of France confronting buried family trauma upon their father’s release from prison. Enzo, 19, and his sister Carla, 20, have been fending for themselves for years. When their father, Anthony, is released from prison, Enzo sees the fleeting promise of rebuilding a family, while it is inconceivable for Carla. As his past catches up with him, Enzo must confront a reality he has kept to himself for far too long.

Fuel in the Arteries (Flesh & Fuel) aka Du Fioul dans les artères by Pierre Le Gall Étienne who is fond of exploring the twin themes of time and love, charts the life of Étienne a dedicated and passionate truck driver. Ever the road, driving week after week, his love life is reduced to fleeting, nameless encounters in parking lots with brief encounters with strangers. But when he meets Bartosz, a Polish trucker, Étienne, his loneliness is turned upside down for which he is ready to do anything to give life a whole new meaning.

Vietnamese woman director Phuong Mai Nguen’s In Waves is an animation feature which opens the Cannes’ Critics’ Week Section. Set in Los Angeles, based on AJ Dungo’s acclaimed graphic novel, the 2D/3D drama follows a shy teenager AJ who likes surfing and meets up Kristen, who, on the other hand, swears by skateboarding and drawing and how as they navigate love and illness in California.. The two though fall madly in love and even as happy future seems hand’s distance, Kristen is struck by a sudden illness. How the two, together, face adversity, driven by the strength of their love, their friends, and newly shared passion for surfing and the ocean, forms the fulcrum of Nguen’s In Waves.

Farewell, Cruel World (Adieu monde cruel) by Felix de Givry rings the curtains down on the Critics’ Week compendium of film screenings. An introspective coming of age drama, were we have Otto Vidal, 14, vanishing following a farewell letter to his classmates. While everyone assumes he is dead, since he is too ashamed to return home following the failed attempt, he hides like a ghost. Léna, a girl from his high school, however, spots him one night wandering the streets of the City and comes to him.

Truly, a mixed medley of multifarious thematic narratives and individual cinematic styles is set to wow the audiences keen to explore and examine the Curated Critics’ Choice that saw these lucky eleven make the cut among the thousands that threw their hat in the ring for the coveted place