Cannes 2026 – day 6: Adèle’s desire, Gilles “Moulin” Lellouche, Hope madness…

Every day, the hot spot live from the 79th Cannes Film Festival.

Film of the day: Hope by Na Hong-jin (in competition)

Ten years after his remarkable The StrangersNa Hong-jin returns to business. For its premiere in competition, the Korean filmmaker changes gear and tackles the alien invasion film: in a small port town, a creature from the sky massacres everything in its path, leaving behind corpses and destruction. Two police officers and heavily armed residents then embark on a fierce hunt to try to kill him, despite his almost supernatural resistance.

The film opens with an hour of spectacular, tense and chaotic action, where the threat remains invisible for a long time. Na Hong-jin connects the bravura pieces with crazy energy, before expanding his story via a paranormal investigation and some unexpected touches of humor. Hybrid fresco of 2h40, Hope fuses Korean influences and American blockbusters to offer an intense, excessive and totally exhilarating spectacle.

The performance of the day: Gilles Lellouche in Mill (in competition)

The “Nemes” signature is these frames with lines which imprison characters smothered by a vast off-camera. On the Croisette, the Hungarian connects the Auschwitz camp (The Son of Saul in 2015) with occupied Lyon (this Milltherefore) operating the same logic of doloristic immersion. To do it well, he needs performers who hold up. After Géza Röhrig (the impressive Saul), here is Gilles Lellouche. The actor is never as good as in bubbling restraint, facade dejection, in short when the heavy artillery does not need to be displayed.

Here he is a Jean Moulin stuck in his obligation of permanent concealment. The leader of the Resistance keeps a low profile, lies, submits, remains silent, bends his back, receives blows… Christ stopped at Montluc prison! Lellouche is perfect, with charisma and ultra-sensitive fragility. Stetson-ready, dressed to the nines even in adversity. A few months after his friend Dujardin clashed with collaborator Luchaire in Rays and ShadowsLellouche embodies his exact opposite on an almost identical note. Interpretation award? We vote for it.

Quote of the day: Adèle Exarchopoulos, star of Madder (in competition)

“Cannes? I have neither weariness nor habit. I just dream of being on the jury one day. There’s the masquerade side, where people will ask me questions like “what are these wands, what’s difficult with your dresses?” But the soul of Cannes is the films that emerge there, like Black Dog, One day with my fatherwhich I loved, or I’m glad you’re dead nowPalme d’Or for short film last year, which made me shift. I want to be on the jury to see it more closely, to defend films. I think it’s the consequence of my complex of never having been a delegate of my class.”

The prostate of the day: Philippe Katerine in Jim Queen (Midnight Session)

It’s the Midnight session that gets people talking. First feature from the Bobbypills studio, Jim Queen tells the setbacks of Jim, a sexy icon of the Parisian gay scene, struck by Heterosis – a virus that transforms gays into straights. You see the program. Not content with signing a joyous delirium passing Disney iconography to the sultry Plympton in a riot of colors and delirious gags, the two directors asked Philippe Katerine to lend his voice to… a prostate. We will spare you the details which lead to this brief sequence where the hero’s little gland, filmed like the Eye of Providence or the Masonic Delta, begins to speak. But when it jabbers, it speaks loudly, with the nonchalant, lunar and offbeat diction of the great stake of French pop. With this voice that seems to come out of a too hot sauna, placed here, on an organ that we didn’t necessarily want to hear blabbering.

He is not alone. He joins a gang at the height of delirium: Alex Ramirès in the title role, François Sagat (the porn star) as a muscular nemesis or even Elisabeth Wiener, French voice of Meryl Streep and Glenn Close, who came to lend her voice to this barnum. Fitting casting: tight to the bone, confident off-piste, it is the image of a film which reminds us that the Festival, by the way, still knows how to welcome the weirdos. Long live the prostate, long live Katerine, long live Jim Queen.

Video of the day: Géraldine Nakache for If you think well (Cannes Première)

If you think well is Géraldine Nakache’s fourth feature film as director. This is above all a first. Sixteen years later All that glitters co-directed with Hervé Mimran, seven years after his first solo film, I will go where you goshe directs a film without acting in it. Intense story about the influence of a man over his partner, carried by Monia Chokri and Niels Schneider (the couple of Imaginary loves by Dolan), the film is a new stage in his journey. Meeting on the Croisette.

Today’s documentary: The Revolution will come by Pegah Ahangarani (Special Session)

While today we talk more about Ormuz than Tehran, this documentary puts into perspective what Iranians experience, caught between the oppression of a tyrannical regime and the ravages of a war declared by the United States and Israel. More than a documentary, it is a real document which goes back in time to the 1979 Revolution which brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power, and takes the form of a filmed diary.

Director Pegah Ahangarani brings individual and collective memory into dialogue, through five portraits of her loved ones (her father, a teacher who marked her life, etc.) all victims of a regime which was, for some, initially, synonymous with immense hope. This cleverly orchestrated patchwork (family video archives, images of demonstrations, press articles, sound recordings and even a touch of animation) also tells the story of the guilt of the exile, forced to flee her country and devoured with anguish for those who remained.

Today in Cannes

After the Hope UFO, the competition continues its course with The Unknown by Arthur Harari, presented as very divisive by Thierry Frémaux when the selection was announced in April. It will then be the return of a great Cannes filmmaker, Cristian Mungiu, who recruited Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve for Fjord. Other events of the day: Once Upon a Time in Harlem at the Fortnight, The Marie-Claire affair (the film about Gisèle Halimi with Charlotte Gainsbourg) at Cannes Première or Amine Bouhafa’s music lesson for SACEM.