16/04/2026 - The artistic director of the Directors’ Fortnight discusses his 2026 selection, his editorial line and his view on the race to secure a spot on the Croisette

(© Florent Drillon)

Following the revelation of the line-up for the 58th Directors’ Fortnight (running 13 to 23 May within the 79th Cannes Film Festival – read our article), we met with the sidebar’s artistic director Julien Rejl in Paris.

Cineuropa: Your 2026 selection is characterised by eclecticism. How were you guided in your choices?
Julien Rejl: I was really pleased with our 2025 edition because it showcased a wide range of film registers and spoke to different types of audiences: focusing on really cutting-edge arthouse cinema and on slightly more mainstream films, without sacrificing anything in mise en scene terms. It leaned more towards the kind of balance I was aiming for. So we were looking to continue in and to confirm that direction, but we also wanted to transpose this experimentation onto documentary and animated films. Because, in my mind there’s no difference between the various film languages, and I found we still weren’t including the great diversity of works that I’m interested in. So the idea of balancing totally new directors, independent films, established or maturing filmmakers, and a plurality of submissions ranging from research films through to more crowd-pleasing films, was what guided us through the prospection and selection process.

You’ve got three animated films and three documentaries, which account for almost a third of the feature films in the line-up.
I don’t set any limits. I came out of last year frustrated that I hadn’t managed to accomplish what I set out to do in that respect. With animation, it’s not helped by the fact that there are fewer choices compared to the other genres. And with documentaries, given that Cannes isn’t really known for accepting huge numbers of them, we don’t tend to receive sufficient numbers of them ahead of time which are then likely to be selected in Berlin, Sundance, the IDFA or elsewhere. So it’s all about conviction and fieldwork, which ended up paying off. But I just consider the three animations and three documentaries that we have in the line-up as films. And I’ll bet that We Are Aliens by Kohei Kadowaki, Viva Carmen by Sébastien Laudenbach and Le Vertige by Quentin Dupieux will each be seen very differently, like arthouse films rather than animated works. And the same goes for the documentaries: none of them take the same approach. One of them lends a voice to witnesses who are telling a story, the other, which is a bit more involving, records reality as it happens, and Gabin by Maxence Voiseux focuses on a character and watches him grow up.

Having an animation by Quentin Dupieux and a documentary by Alain Cavalier in the line-up isn’t something that happens every year.
They weren’t on anyone’s radar. But when they did come our way, I definitely didn’t decide we should have them purely based on the names that were attached to them. Just last year, Quentin submitted a film we didn’t select. But as a result of their singularity, their utter uniqueness which defies categorisation, Le Vertige and Thanks for Coming will have more of an impact in the Directors’ Fortnight than in another selection where they’d risk getting lost in the crowd. It’s also a total joy to be welcoming Alain Cavalier to Cannes with his latest film.

You’ve also got Radu Jude, Lisandro Alonso, Kantemir Balagov and Clio Barnard - there’s no shortage of well-known filmmakers in your selection.
We don’t talk enough about the haphazard nature of putting a selection together, especially when it comes to parallel sections, because you never know what films you’ll actually have access to. And the competition is intense! So we try to move carefully. When we’re bowled over by a film, do we take it or risk losing it by waiting to see whether there’s anything else that we like? That’s also a big part of the selection process. So, in retrospect, you could say that we’ve got Radu Jude, Lisandro Alonso, Clio Barnard and Kantemir Balagov, but we’re first and foremost wagering on films that we love. And we do also have six first feature films in our line-up, so we do try to unearth new talent too. It’s a balancing act and the end result is always unpredictable.

But there is a need to attract media attention to guarantee proper coverage of the Directors’ Fortnight...
That’s true, and it’s sad, on some level. As an artistic director, especially when it comes to the Directors’ Fortnight, I don’t want to give people what they’re expecting. It’s not particularly exciting if selections are predictable, if films are already flagged for Cannes, the Directors’ Fortnight or anywhere else. It’s like the general public who tend to focus on a handful of films in cinemas these days, and don’t go to see the others. A festival’s job is to take people into unchartered territory. So I’m always looking to defy expectations. But we also have to face up to the reality on the ground. Which films are the best? Yes, it’s good to have films which carry the rest of the selection to ensure visibility, to help draw the spotlight, and I do bear that in mind, but if we’ve got more well-known names in the selection this year, it’s not intentional.

Besides animation and documentaries, what mix of genres can we expect to see this year?
Comedies of very different kinds like the French films Shana by Lila Pinell and Too Many Beasts by Sarah Arnold; a thriller: the Venezuelan film Death Has No Master by Jorge Thielen Armand; a vaguely psychological drama called Dora by South Korea’s July Jung; a road movie exploring a spiritual Thai legacy called 9 Temples to Heaven by Sompot Chidgasornpongse; a family tragedy verging on film noir by the name of Butterfly Jam by Kantemir Balagov; a dramedy called Low Expectations by Norway’s Eivind Landsvik; a social drama called I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning by Clio Barnard, etc.

Going back to the competition with the other Cannes selections and other big festivals, in your early days at the Directors’ Fortnight, you notably stated your intention to not consider films which had been rejected by the Official Selection, if they hadn’t been submitted to you beforehand. Have you changed position on this at all?
This year, we made decisions based on the films which were sent to us in a timely manner, rather than throwing lifelines to films which came knocking at our door at the last minute. Which doesn’t mean you don’t get films rejected by the Official Selection in the Directors’ Fortnight, but that is the basic approach we take every year. The only exception to the rule was Nadav Lapid’s Yes last year, which was a very unusual case. Ironically, the fierce competition we have with the Official Selection, who always try to get first choice, helps us to advance more calmly. We put together a list of the films that interest us the most and we wait until we’ve seen lots of films before sending out invitations and compiling the final list, which takes place very late in the day. But I feel like there’s real consistency in all the choices we make and that the films end up in the right place. One or two films that I would have liked to have seen in the Directors’ Fortnight might have ended up in the Un Certain Regard section or in the Official Competition, but that’s all. Even though we’re in an increasingly competitive market, we still manage to pull it off with a selection that’s true to us and which isn’t shaped by other people.

(Translated from French)