Welcome to another special edition of the UK Film Review Podcast. In this episode, titled Cannes Film Festival 2026, host and film critic Chris Olson sits down with resident critic Jack Salvadori, who has just returned from the Croisette. The 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival proved to be a thoroughly complicated affair, and Jack brings his characteristically candid, unfiltered insights straight from the cinema halls of France to our listeners.
The conversation begins with what Jack fiercely defends as the absolute best film of Cannes 2026: El Ser Querido (The Beloved). Directed by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, the film marked the director's confident, precise arrival in Official Competition. Jack walks Chris through how the film rests entirely on the monumental shoulders of Javier Bardem, who delivers one of the finest performances of his career as Esteban Martínez, a legendary, Oscar-winning filmmaker returning to Spain to shoot a colonial-era desert epic. However, beneath the cinematic grandeur lies an intimate family drama regarding Esteban's attempt to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Emilia, played by Victoria Luengo. Jack highlights Sorogoyen's mastery of tension and restraint, particularly in how he shifts the atmospheric temperature from comedy to psychological terror in an instant, creating an emotionally layered masterpiece that should have taken the festival's top prize.
The discussion then turns to the historic presence of queer cinema at the festival, spearheaded by Los Javis' latest offering in Official Competition, La Bola Negra. Earning a strong four-star review from Jack, the film is framed as an epic of desire, memory, and inherited trauma. Spanning two-and-a-half hours, the Spanish directing duo weaves three parallel narratives across different time periods to explore how the spectre of the Spanish Civil War and generational repression bleed into the present day.
From triumphs, Chris and Jack pivot to the film that actually did take home the coveted Palme d'Or: Fjord, directed by Cristian Mungiu. In a less positive review, Jack expresses his intense frustration with the festival jury's decision, describing the film as a monument to mediocrity that never remotely earns its prestige. Set in a remote Norwegian town, Fjord follows a deeply religious Romanian family whose five children are suddenly separated from them by local child welfare services following allegations of physical abuse. While praising Sebastian Stan's impressively restrained and believable performance as the exhausted patriarch, Jack argues that Mungiu's social critique is surprisingly one-dimensional.
Next, the critics look at Pawel Pawlikowski's highly anticipated return after seven years with Fatherland. Shot in immaculate, austere black and white, the film feels like the final movement in an unofficial trilogy that began with Ida and Cold War. Set in 1949, the narrative follows Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann, played with weary grandeur by Hans Zischler, as he returns from American exile to a physically and ideologically shattered Germany to receive the Goethe Prize.
Finally, Jack shares his joy over the ultimate dark horse of the festival: Club Kid. Written, directed by, and starring Jordan Firstman alongside Cara Delevingne, this charming A24-acquired comedy became the word-of-mouth sensation whispered about in the Palais queues. Firstman plays Peter, a chaotic, forty-year-old party promoter whose perpetual adolescence is shattered when a sharp ten-year-old boy from London arrives on his doorstep, revealing himself to be the son Peter never knew he had. Jack commends the film for its effortless humour, emotional sincerity, and unapologetically queer perspective that never feels ornamental. It is an uplifting note to end on, proving that cinematic discovery is still possible amidst the politics of Cannes.
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