Cannes 2026 #7, with Thomas Flew and Neta Alexander

Cannes 2026 is nearing its close, but the Film Comment crew has not slowed down one bit as we continue to cut through the noise with dispatches, interviews, Podcasts, a special Cannes Critics’ Grid, and much more. This year’s edition has been packed with highly anticipated premieres from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Valeska Grisebach, James Gray, Paweł Pawlikowski, and many more acclaimed filmmakers.

For our seventh Podcast from the Croisette, FC Editor Devika Girish invited Sight and Sound’s Thomas Flew and scholar Neta Alexander to discuss a trio of late-festival Competition premieres: Andrey Zvyagintsev's Palme d'Or–contender Minotaur (3:50); Ira Sachs's 1980s period drama The Man I Love (18:16); and Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo's The Black Ball (La Bola Negra) (32:48), which received a rousing 20-minute ovation from the Cannes audience.

Next, the group shout out highlights from other sections of the festival: Tom Fontenille's documentary A Secret Heart (41:52), which premiered in the ACID sidebar; Clio Barnard's youth-in-England fiction feature I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning (45:20), in the Directors' Fortnight program; and John Abraham's newly restored Report to Mother (1986) (47:35), from the Cannes Classics section.

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