Reclaim The Frame recommendations from the 79th Cannes Film Festival

Reclaim The Frame Team
May 26
4 min read

Three people pose together on a red carpet at a formal event, smiling toward photographers, dressed in elegant eveningwear and tuxedos with cameras and attendees visible in the background. — *(L-R) Hannah Einbinder, Jane Schoenbrun and Gillian Anderson at the premiere of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma*

Our Director Melanie Iredale spent the opening weekend of Cannes in dark cinemas and long queues, and we’re sharing a handful of #ReclaimTheFrame recommendations from this year’s festival - focusing on a few of the women and non-binary-led titles across Competition, Un Certain Regard and Special Screenings.

Women directed 5 of the 22 films in Competition at Cannes this year, while the Un Certain Regard section featured several prominent titles by women and non-binary filmmakers. Across the wider Official Selection, around one-third of the programme was directed or co-directed by women or marginalised gender filmmakers.

All the more reason to highlight some of the work we did see - so here goes:

TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA written & directed by Jane Schoenbrun

USA 2026. Opening film, Un Certain Regard.

Two women sit side by side in a warmly lit interior with patterned walls; one wears glasses and a pink sweater while looking downward pensively, and the other sits slightly out of focus behind her.

Following We're All Going to the World's Fair and I Saw the TV Glow, Jane Schoenbrun’s latest is a playful, bloody, hot riff on slasher mythology, VHS horror and desire in all its messy, unleashed forms.

Set around a reboot of the fictional Camp Miasma slasher franchise, this is a film about horror as memory, VHS as mythology, and desire flickering through the textures of genre cinema. It is also, quite simply, really fun - thrilling, hot, funny, bloody and completely unafraid of pleasure.

Schoenbrun does for the slasher what Scream did for Halloween and what Scary Movie did for Scream, but with queer fantasy firmly at the centre. It lovingly dismantles the rules while remaining completely seduced by them.

With a fabulous, Miss Havisham-like turn from Gillian Anderson as a faded scream queen, the film is at its best in its sense of play - a very fun place to spend two hours. A worthy winner of the 2026 Queer Palm.

International sales: The Match Factory

UK & Ireland release: MUBI (21 August 2026)

GENTLE MONSTER written & directed by Marie Kreutzer

Austria, France, Germany 2026. In Competition.

A blonde woman in a brown leather jacket sits beside a grand piano in a softly lit room, looking thoughtfully toward the light coming from the left.

Following Corsage, Marie Kreutzer returns with a knotty, deeply uncomfortable study of what it means to slowly recognise something you don’t want to see in the person you love.

Anchored by a compelling performance from Léa Seydoux, the film continually destabilises our understanding of what is happening and why, shifting perspective as her character’s own perception evolves and unravels.

At its centre is the shame of confrontation: the emotional and psychological resistance to naming what is unfolding inside intimacy, and the way love itself can become a mechanism for looking away. Seydoux holds all of this, often without saying a word, drawing us through a story that is as tense as it is quietly devastating.

As with Corsage, Kreutzer is interested in the violence embedded in “ordinary” relationships and the performances expected of women within them - but here the lens is tighter, more claustrophobic, and more morally unsettled.

International sales: mk2 Films

No UK distribution announced as yet, with Netflix reportedly circling the film following Cannes.

GARANCE written & directed by Jeanne Herry

France 2026. In Competition.

A young person in dark clothing stands against a blue wall with a cigarette in their mouth, looking off to the side as their shadow falls across the wall beside them.

One of the more quietly affecting Competition titles of the opening weekend, Garance is built around a richly lived-in performance from Adèle Exarchopoulos as a Paris-based actor navigating addiction, precarious work and unstable relationships across several years.

Jeanne Herry’s approach is attentive without being invasive, allowing Garance’s self-sabotage, tenderness and evasions to coexist without judgement. The film never rushes her - instead sitting with the rhythms of her life as it frays and reforms in small, often unremarkable ways.

It is also notable for the casualness with which queer relationships are held within the frame - not as revelation or exception, but simply part of the fabric of her life.

Less formally restless than some of this year’s Competition titles, Garance finds its strength in performance and accumulation, in watching someone try (and repeatedly fail) to hold themselves together in public view.

International sales: Pathé International

No UK distribution announced.

**REHEARSALS FOR A REVOLUTION (Répétitions pour une révolution) directed by Pegah Ahangarani**

Iran, UK, France 2026. Special Screenings.

A huge crowd gathers around a van fitted with loudspeakers during a public demonstration or rally, with a large portrait banner displayed beside a monumental archway in the background.

Dedicated “to all the mothers who lost their children to war”, this is a five-part documentary guided by the filmmaker’s own voice and drawn from family archive, personal testimony and protest footage, tracing fifty years of Iranian history - from the 1979 Revolution through to the present day.

What emerges is both deeply personal and structurally expansive: a portrait of a people who never stopped rehearsing for freedom, practising resistance across generations even as freedom itself remains out of reach.

Rather than explaining history, the film lets it accumulate through lived experience. Home movies sit alongside public images; intimate family memory alongside collective rupture. It is educational, but not didactic - instead opening a space to be inside history as it is being carried, remembered and survived.

Cinema here becomes a reminder of common humanity, and of how persistence itself can become a form of political testimony.

Winner of the 2026 L’Œil d’or documentary prize. Since Cannes, Sony Pictures Classics has acquired the film for multiple international territories, though no UK distributor has yet been announced.

International sales: The Party Film Sales

**MARVELLOUS MORNINGS (Les Matins merveilleux) written & directed by Avril Besson**

France 2026. Special Screenings. Eligible for Queer Palm and Caméra d’Or.

Two people lean in closely toward each other inside a warmly lit bar or restaurant, wearing colourful textured coats and large earrings, with orange ambient lighting and wooden ceiling beams creating an intimate atmosphere.

Set on the southern French coast, Marvellous Mornings follows a tentative summer connection between two young women, unfolding through an awkward, gentle meet-cute that never quite settles into certainty or ease.

The film itself is slight - more promising in fragments than fully realised as a whole - but there are moments that linger, particularly in its approach to intimacy and consent, which feel grounded, unforced and embedded in the rhythm of everyday interaction rather than treated as statement or lesson.

Much of what holds the film together is Raya Martigny, whose presence gives the material warmth and emotional specificity. It is a shame we don’t get to spend more time with her character, but the film marks Martigny as very much one to watch going forward.

What Marvellous Mornings does offer, importantly, is a rare depiction of a trans woman moving through romance, desire and awkwardness with softness rather than narrative weight or explanation. Even within a film that doesn’t fully land, that matters.

International sales: Pyramide International

No UK distribution announced.

Thanks to Film Hub London for supporting our trip to Cannes.