Entertainment
All the Animation at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival
Like most of the major film festivals, Cannes has had an up-and-down history with its representation of animation. There have been some strong years for the medium, and one must never forget that “Shrek 2” competed for the Palme d’Or in 2004, but there have been other years where the animated offerings at the Croisette have been a touch scarce.
Recently though, Cannes has become a bit of an unexpected launch pad for animated movies hoping to translate prestige and positive reviews into Oscar glory. In 2024 “Flow,” a tiny independent Latvian feature in the Un Certain Regard section, was able to translate raves (including from IndieWire) into awards buzz that steadily built throughout the year into a surprising but delightful Best Animated Feature win at the Academy Awards. Last year, nothing much had a chance in the face of “KPOP Demon Hunters,” but two Cannes premieres — “Arco” and “Little Amélie or the Character of Rain” — were able to make it all the way to nominations.
This year’s Cannes, which begins May 12 and wraps on May 23, only has a handful of animated features to look forward to. But they represent a very wide and diverse breadth of the medium, and there are a few to keep an eye on both as award contenders and exciting oddities.
Probably the most likely to repeat the success of something like “Flow” or “Arco” is “Fallen,” a French animated feature by Louis Clichy, a Pixar alum who worked on movies like “WALL-E” and “Up” before making two animated “Asterix” features in his home country. Clichy’s third feature is 2D animated — with a sketchbook aesthetic (see above) that looks quite charming — and focuses on a young boy who needs an iron corset to stand upright and breaks away from his strict life on his family’s farm to find a passion for music. It seems like the type of sweet, uplifting story audiences would broadly like, and if reviews are good, it can probably ride that to some awards attention.
Two films will premiere at Cannes this May before competing in the main competition of the Annecy International Film Festival in June, a path that “Arco” and “Little Amélie” took last year. One Special Screening is “Tangles,” the debut feature of Canadian director Leah Nelson, which is based on a graphic memoir by Sarah Leavitt and focuses on a daughter who returns to her hometown to help care for her mother, who has begun suffering from Alzheimer’s. “Lucy Lost” from Oliver Clert is a more family-friendly story of a young orphan living in 1915 Sicily who goes on an adventure to uncover the truth behind her mysterious visions.
My most anticipated animated film at Cannes is also probably the least likely to get awards buzz, although the Oscar race would likely be much more interesting if it did. Playing as a Midnight screening, “Jim Queen and the Quest for Chloroqueer” is a retro, 2D animated independent film from debut directors Marco Nguyen and Nicolas Athané that sounds unabashedly camp and extremely queer, focusing on a hunky gay influencer and a twink who search for a cure to a disease that makes gay men heterosexual. It looks gorgeous, weird, daring, funny, and unlike any animated film to ever get serious awards attention, which is why I’m really pulling for it to be great.
Cannes isn’t just the main festival itself, as there are plenty of alternate and independent sections that run in the Croisette during the same two-week period. This year, Directors’ Fortnight will open with the French animated feature “In Waves” from director Phuong Mai Nguyen, about the romance between a surfer and skateboarder; it’s the first animated feature to open Fortnight, and will screen in both English and French language versions. The festival is also set to close with “Le vertige,” from French comedic director Quentin Dupieux, a movie about a man who discovers his world is a simulation that’s animated to look like a PS2 game. Other films in the selection include Japanese rotoscope film “We Are Aliens” and “Viva Carmen!”, an adaptation of the famous opera by “Chicken for Linda!” director Sébastien Laudenbach.
Will all these films be good? Probably not. There’s a chance that a few of them won’t find distribution in the U.S. at all. Still, that’s the excitement of a film festival: getting in on the ground floor of new, undiscovered movies and, when they’re good, being able to say you were there to see it first.
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CNN, MS NOW and Politico are warning that the Trump administration will reimpose a “complete ban” on their access to the White House without a judge issuing a preliminary injunction.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted a temporary restraining order, forcing the White House to restore access to the White House to the outlets as he more fully considers the legal arguments. The TRO lasts for 14 days.
In a filing in federal court on Monday, attorneys for the three news outlets argued that the Trump White House actions since then “leave little doubt that it will immediately reinstitute a complete ban of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico if allowed the opportunity.”
The outlets’ legal team, led by Theodore Boutrous Jr., pointed to the White House’s restriction on CNN from access to State Dinner arrivals on Thursday evening. The network then was barred from serving as TV pooler on Air Force One on Trump’s trip to Tennessee on Saturday, with no replacement stepping in, and leaving a dearth of TV images from the trip.
“Because the ban is an unlawful assault on the most fundamental First Amendment freedoms and will inflict irreparable harm on Plaintiffs and the public if not restrained, this Court should preliminarily enjoin its enforcement pending the resolution of this case,” the news outlets’ attorneys wrote.
Kelly cited a lack of due process by the White House when it pulled dozens of credentials of reporters from the three outlets. While the Trump DOJ has cited standards of “professionalism and decorum” and national security concerns, the media outlets’ legal team called that reasoning that “pretextual” and “post hoc,” as well as vague.
In the latest brief, CNN, MS NOW and Politico also again cited violations of the First Amendment. They noted that Trump has explained the ban by blaming their coverage as “Purposely … negative,” among other things.
“His statements also make clear he implemented the ban to coerce more favorable coverage from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, and to deter other journalists and news organizations from newsgathering and reporting that the President might view as negative,” the news outlets’ legal team wrote. “And his administration has continued to retaliate against Plaintiffs even after the temporary restraining order, only underscoring that Defendants’ motive is to punish and chill journalism they dislike.”
The outlets are asking the judge to prohibit the Trump team from pulling hard pass credentials, or to ensure the reporters of the White House access they had before Sept. 18. In contrast to a TRO, a preliminary injunction would sideline Trump’s ban until a trial is held, or if an appeals court rules otherwise.
Trump initially banned the three outlets on Sept. 18. When the judge granted a TRO last early Thursday, it meant that the White House had to restore hard passes, with reporters not gaining reentry until around noon that day.
The issue of whether the White House can also restrict CNN from the pool is a slightly different, but related issue. It’s also one at the center of another case, involving the Associated Press after it was banned from the pool and other White House events. That case is currently on appeal.
That said, in the latest brief, the three outlets cited the White House’s continued prohibitions on CNN as an example of White House retaliation over protected speech.
For much of last week, there was no TV network pool, meaning that there was little video coverage of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the White House. The four other networks in the pool — CBS News, ABC News, Fox News and NBC News — initially suspended their participation in protest of the exclusion of CNN. The networks resumed the TV pool coverage this week, but it will be put to the test again on Thursday, when CNN is assigned to that duty.
“Every day, critically important news is breaking at the White House, and the ban will substantially interfere with Plaintiffs’ ability to cover it,” the outlets brief stated. “The ban also inflicts an injury on all news media organizations—which now risk a similar fate if they engage in fact-based, independent reporting the President deems insufficiently favorable.”
The DOJ’s brief in response is due by Friday.
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