The Director’s Fortnight sidebar of the Cannes Film Festival has become an article of debate in recent years, sometimes considered “the films that didn’t make it into the main Cannes program.” While that may be true of a few films, there is a lot of quality at DF, not only demonstrated by the excellent selection of films that have played in the program over the years but just last year in a diverse slate that includes such standouts as “Mirrors No. 3,” “Yes,” and “Dangerous Animals.” And this year’s program boasts one of the best films of Cannes 2026, a subtle drama already taken by Neon. The first few days of 2026 reveal the second position already; we’ll talk about the third film in this post, widely considered the worst of the fest so far, later.
Let’s start at the top with Arie and Chuko Esiri’s confidence “Clarissa,” a film with a soft, visually provocative language that also boasts head-turning ideas about the harsh effects of colonialism. A work from Virginia Woolf’s narrative Mrs. Dallowaythe directors of “Eyimofe: This is My Desire” cleverly navigated the arcs of many characters in two time periods, not only never losing the emotional threads and intelligence of the episode but developing them with their creativity. And they are amazing performance directors, directing a collection that will be among my favorites of the year. There isn’t a false note from a single cast member, from familiar faces to new faces.
Sophie Okonedo (also famous for the upcoming “Mouse”) plays Clarissa, a wealthy women in conflict-ridden Nigeria, where violence erupts every day but far from her Lagos home. This is where she plans to host the party, and a lot of “Clarissa” sees her commanding her staff to make sure it runs smoothly. While the party is on the mend, familiar faces return to Clarissa’s life, including a very angry Peter (a heartbreaking David Oyelowo), who has never regained the undeniable love he had for Clarissa decades earlier. Clarissa is married to Richard (Jude Akuwudike) who is stable but boring, and one quickly realizes that she is settled for love, but in reality she was not with Peter, but with a girl named Sally (Nikki Amuka-Bird), who also finds her way to the party after dropping off her child for a trip at the nearest airport.
“Clarissa” harkens back to the early days of this would-be romantic couple, and Erisis does a better job of portraying the same actors than I’ve seen in years. Forget getting old; just find a good casting director like this. Young Clarissa is played by the charming India Amarteifio, young Sally (Ayo Edebiri) is not washed up as a carefree person from a young age. Clarissa is dating Peter (Toheeb Jimoh, using that Sam charm from the “Ted Lasso” score as an emotional weapon), who wants to be a writer but withers under her criticism.
Against this background of young intellectuals who would become Nigeria’s elite meeting regional leaders at lavish parties, we meet a soldier named Septimus (Fortune Nwafor, an up-and-coming Lagos actor who appeared in Esiri’s last film). Septimus faces dwindling assets and faltering leadership before he is struck by a tragic event that shapes his future in ways the Clarissas never imagined.
From the beginning, Jonathan Bloom’s cinematography is another character in this wonderful encounter. The camera lives in river water, dewy grass, and blowing sand, taking us to the place instead of just capturing it. He often captures the glass windows in Clarissa’s house, giving us a sense of listening and characterizing as a widescreen image within a picture. It’s not a visual visual language, but it’s a poem that adds a lot of authenticity to the whole production.
Of course, that wouldn’t work without a ground-based, subtle operation. Okonedo conveys glimpses of regret for a life that might have been or sadness for the one he chose, and the restraint that makes his work so powerful. A strong contrast especially compared to the bright work from Amarteifio and Jimoh. Seeing young Peter’s smile and how he will become a shell of the man played by Oyelowo adds to the poignancy.
Many films like this can be broken, but there is a wonderful parallel with “Clarissa”, a vision of people on different shores of the river of life, connected by the flowing waters of time.
Reed van Dyk “Atonement” couldn’t be more different in terms of storytelling but shares the same sense of truth-seeking you pick up from the classic PTSD game. Genuinely infuriating before touching, Van Dyk’s debut looks at an extreme act of violence from three perspectives: the perpetrator, the survivor, and the witness. It has a few bits in the middle that feel like they could use more restraint, but it recovers well, and stays grounded in reality with a series of excellent performances from people who clearly took this project very seriously, refusing to simplify or exploit this true story into melodrama.
“Atonement” opens in Baghdad in 2003, introducing us to the Khachaturian family, led by Mariam (Hiam Abbass). As the city erupted in violence, the Khachaturians survived a bomb blast near a relative’s house where they lived, choosing to try to leave that part of the region to return to their family home. A trip to work leads them into the heart of a firefight between US Marines and Iraqi insurgents. Soldiers on rooftops in the city center have been told to shoot at any vehicle that tries to pass because of how many have been used as weapons against American troops. Traveling with her sons and even a small grandson in the car, Mariam enters a nightmare of gunfire, not all of them survive.
In these early, terrifying scenes with a touching realism reminiscent of “The Painful Locker,” we also meet one of the soldiers on the roof shooting the Khachaturians, Lou D’Allesandro (Boyd Holbrook). When the reporter appeared The New York Times named Michael Reid (Kenneth Branagh) arrives on the scene shortly after the disaster, Lou bravely confronts him. After all, why did they drive towards where the shooting took place? What did they think would happen?
Ten years later, Lou is deep in the grips of PTSD. He takes drugs to control himself and shakes when he thinks about Baghdad. In order to find some kind of healing, she contacts Reid in hopes that she can set up a meeting with Mariam and her family to discuss that day.
Even in the heat of war, what does a soldier who kills an innocent person owe? What is the mother who had to create an impossible amount on the day she is expected to give? And what roles do journalists play in connecting the two? There is a line in the PTSD forum about how a gun fires both ways, affecting the person who hits it and the person who pulls the gun.
Van Dyk is gentle, mostly avoiding melodrama except for a few missteps, trying to ask these questions with nuanced character work, especially from Holbrook and Abbass. The former is always good, and one hopes that this is the part that finally breaks him, and the latter can do no wrong. Their scenes together have an immediate emotional power, both unsure of what to want and what to give.
The final scene of “Revenge” is a beauty, an unlikely group of people working together to find what was lost.
Finally, there is the opening night film of the Director’s Fortnight: brutal “Butterfly Jam” from “Beanpole” director Kantemir Balagov. Talented people are immersed in this cruel game that talks about toxic masculinity but says nothing about the hot topic. Worst of all, so little of it feels so authentic that its extreme violence becomes little more than a button-pushing, audience-torturing exercise.
The best way to read “Butterfly Jam” is that it was actually written by its 16-year-old protagonist Temir (Talka Akdogan) because this is a script that sees the world through the eyes of a confused teenager. Temir is a successful wrestler at his school in Newark, and clearly worships his father Azik (Barry Keoghan), who makes the best delens in town at the family’s Circassian restaurant, where he works with Azik’s sister Zalya (Riley Keough). The haunting character of Johnny Boy enters these absurd streets in the form of Marat (Harry Melling), one of those guys who you know is going to do something wrong or horrible or both to trigger the film’s final act. And I never mentioned the giant bird or Chekhov’s Cotton Candy Machine.
Balagov’s characters lack the depth for this to work as a lesson—one Temir’s Alika (Jaaliyah Richards) is annoyingly written to an almost comical level because we know two things about her by the end of the film: she fights and has acne.
Keoghan, Keough, and Melling may be complex actors, but you can see them wrestling (sorry) with this script in every scene to such an extent that they often feel like they’re in separate movies. Keough seems eager to transcend the nonsense around him, and not just in character.
