19/05/2026 - CANNES 2026: Nicolas Athané and Marco Nguyen deliver a sharp, hilarious and surprisingly heartfelt adult animated feature built around a fictional disease that turns gay men heterosexual

Jim Queen, an adult animated film directed by Nicolas Athané and Marco Nguyen (in their directorial debut) and co-written by the duo alongside Simon Balteaux and Brice Chevillard, centres on a fictional disease known as “heterosis”, a virus that transforms gay men into heterosexuals. The film has premiered in the Midnight Screenings section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

We initially follow the parallel stories of “Perfect Jim” – voiced in its original French version by comedian Alex Ramirès – who stuns everyone who lays their eyes on him and works as a gay icon and influencer in Paris. One day, however, he contracts heterosis, and his entire world begins to crumble. His abs disappear, he suddenly starts understanding the rules of football, develops a series of other stereotypically “heterosexual” traits, and ultimately ends up kissing a woman. As a result, he loses almost all of his followers. All except one: Lucien, a twink — a gay slang term referring to a slim young man, usually in his late teens or twenties, with little or no body hair — whose mother, politician Christine Bayer, is outspoken in her disdain towards LGBTQ+ rights. Unable to reveal the truth about his sexuality to her, Lucien decides to join forces with Jim in search of a cure for the mysterious virus, which, in the meantime, has begun spreading rapidly.

In its brisk 85 minutes, Jim Queen proves an extraordinary example of the right balance between humour and seriousness, while tackling a subject matter rarely explored in animation. Drenched in sexual references — many of them genuinely hilarious, even if not always especially original — the film also engages with more serious themes such as self-acceptance, identity and the failures of maternal love. The character arcs are compelling and the screenplay delivers enough twists to keep audiences consistently on their toes. Athané and Nguyen’s work also partially embraces the musical form, featuring several singing sequences that further enrich the story.

Why wasn’t a film like this made earlier? The premise is simple yet effective, following the unwritten rule of cinema that a film should be summarisable in just a few words or sentences, while still conveying its essential core.Moreover, this animated gem fills a gap that few people probably realised existed, doing so with remarkably strong animation quality despite its low budget.

In a nutshell, Jim Queen is funny, entertaining, touching and satirical. As the story unfolds, it never loses its punchiness or resorts to overly sentimental solutions. Instead, it chooses to focus on flawed characters, avoiding clear-cut notions of “good” and “bad” altogether: Jim himself begins the film as an insufferably self-absorbed man. One can only hope the film finds the resonance it deserves, both within and beyond the community it portrays.

The film is produced by Bobbypills (France) and Umedia (Belgium). International sales are handled by Global Constellation.