The 79th Cannes Film Festival was, on the surface, a more subdued edition. No studio films, fewer stars and a lineup more meh than magnifique.
But that relative calm was deceptive. Beneath it, Cannes 2026 functioned less as a showcase of immediate hits than as a seismic map of the indie film industry, revealing shifting tectonic plates in the transformation of the indie sector, the changing role of studios on the festival circuit, and the accelerating impact of AI across production and marketing. What followed on the Croisette was not noise, but signal.