The studios and PR teams behind La Bola Negra, Fjord, and The Dreamed Adventure are playing it cool — but the call-back rumors suggest their films landed exactly where they needed to. Léa Seydoux's people are quietly confident she's got this in the bag after what critics called a near-career-best turn in Gentle Monster.
Insiders know Park Chan-Wook's jury has a reputation for chaos — remember when Steven Spielberg's jury picked Blue Is the Warmest Color? Nobody saw it coming then, and nobody is certain now. Sources say the festival director Thierry Fremaux leaves "trail of breadcrumbs" for the jury president, which means the final list may have been negotiated long before tonight.
Deadline's Pete Hammond predicted La Bola Negra for Palme d'Or while Damon Wise independently made the same pick — a rare consensus. Both critics flagged Pawel Pawlikowski's Fatherland (an 82-minute black-and-white film) as a near-lock for Jury Prize, and both singled out Léa Seydoux in Gentle Monster as the actress to beat.
Cannes has always been theater, and tonight is curtain call. Whether Park Chan-Wook follows the critics' lead or tears up the script entirely, one thing's certain: someone is going to be blindsided — and that's what makes this festival electric.
The Cannes Film Festival is hurtling toward its closing ceremony and the drama behind the scenes may already be more compelling than anything on screen. According to Deadline's coverage published May 23, 2026, rumors are currently swirling about which film delegations have been summoned back to the Palais des Festivals for tonight's awards — a telltale sign that those films are in serious contention. The buzz is strong that Minotaur, Fjord, The Dreamed Adventure, Fatherland, La Bola Negra and La Gradiva are among those told to return, while others will be left watching from the sidelines.
The stakes are enormous for every filmmaker in that rumored lineup. James Gray has now competed at Cannes six times without a single prize — Paper Tiger was his sixth entry this year alone, and if he walks away empty-handed again, the snub narrative is going to dominate entertainment headlines for weeks. Meanwhile, Pedro Almodóvar doesn't seem likely to win with Bitter Christmas, though sources note he'll hardly mind given that his name appears all over La Bola Negra as a producer.
That's the kind of backstage chess game Cannes rewards — and punishes. Deadline's two top critics, Pete Hammond and Damon Wise, went head-to-head with their predictions for the evening, and while they agreed on some categories, the disagreements are where it gets spicy. Both picked La Bola Negra — directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi — to take home the Palme d'Or, which is notable because that film runs long and has been described as "a bit messy" even by its admirers, yet both men cited its big heart as the deciding factor in a competition that lacked emotional resonance for much of its run.
Where they split: Hammond predicted Fjord (from returning Palme winner Cristian Mungiu) to take Grand Prize while Wise went with Minotaur from Andrey Zvyagintsev. "Cannes is the hardest of all awards to predict," admitted Wise — and last year, Hammond estimates he went just 2 for 7. The acting categories may be where tonight's real fireworks land.
Both critics flagged Léa Seydoux in Gentle Monster as the actress to beat, with Pete Hammond noting she delivered a "near-career-best performance" — high praise from a veteran awards analyst who has seen thousands of them. Javier Bardem earned similar plaudits for The Beloved, though Wise took a wild-card swing by predicting Emmanuel Maccia's turn in Coward for Best Actor instead. Meanwhile, Rami Malek in The Man I Love and Scarlett Johansson in Paper Tiger were mentioned as dark-horse possibilities — which would make the ceremony even more unpredictable if either pulled an upset.
Then there's Park Chan-Wook, jury president and wildcard-in-chief. As Wise pointed out, festival director Thierry Fremaux "often leaves a trail of breadcrumbs for the jury president," meaning some of tonight's decisions may have been quietly negotiated well before the red carpet is rolled out. But history suggests Park Chan-Wook isn't interested in being managed — Steven Spielberg's jury chose Blue Is the Warmest Color for Palme d'Or, and that film had nothing to do with Spielberg's sensibilities whatsoever.
If tonight follows that precedent, someone's grand favorite is going down hard. The Palais fills in a few hours. One category both critics flagged as ripe for surprise was Director — Wise predicted Valeska Grisebach for The Dreamed Adventure, calling it "this year's stealth bomb" capable of sweeping Director, Grand Prix and Best Actress if the jury is feeling adventurous.
Meanwhile, a theme has emerged across this festival that neither critic could ignore: French politics, both in and out of competition. If that thread resonates with Park Chan-Wook's jury, Emmanuel Marre's A Man of His Time (or Gilles Lellouche in Moulin) could emerge as the dark horse nobody saw coming — which is, frankly, exactly how Cannes likes it.
