LFF 2026 is 251 films from 88 countries.
You already know about maybe fifteen of them or so. The galas, the Cannes winners, the ones with a Telluride rave and a distributor pushing hard. Those films will be reviewed by everybody, and they’ll be reviewed really well, by people who have been doing this a lot longer than me.
The interesting part of a festival programme is never that bit though. The hidden gems are the films where you search the title and find nothing but a synopsis, a festival listing, and then not much else at all. No English review. No consensus. Nobody telling you in advance what you’re supposed to get out of it.
Fruit Gathering
Thursday.
Aung Phyoe’s first feature. Two women work in a factory in Yangon. Their friendship becomes something neither of them quite has a word for.
It seems to have won the Grand Prix Crystal Globe at Karlovy Vary this year, and that’s the top prize, not a strand award. It’s also the first time a Myanmar film has ever been selected in competition over there at all. The jury’s own language is worth adding here, because it’s doing two things at once. They called it “a lush and meditative portrait of work and friendship” that becomes “a harrowing drama of obsession and queer desire.”
Now, that’s a hard turn to describe and an even harder one to pull off. A film that opens calmly and closes harrowing has to earn the shift, and most of them don’t.
I’ve searched it in English and found the Karlovy Vary announcement only and not much else. So here’s a top-prize winner from a country whose cinema almost never reaches a competition slot, and the coverage is essentially a press release.
I can’t tell you whether it’s any good. Nobody outside Karlovy Vary can, which is exactly why it’s worth the seat.
Ana, en passant
Tuesday.
Brazilian mixed-technique animation. A young Black French-Brazilian woman processing grief after her grandmother dies.
It premiered at Annecy, which is the animation festival that matters, and it’s distributed by Miyu, who have a genuinely good record of picking work that outlasts its festival run. Other than that, there are no wide reviews. The buzz that does exist is quiet, focused and all about the technique and the subject rather than any name attached to it.
Like grief, this mixed-technique animation doesn’t hold a consistent form. You get days that look like one thing and days that look like something else entirely.
I’m going in with no idea whether it works. That’s the appeal.
Ray Gunn
Saturday.
Brad Bird, sci-fi noir detective animation, roughly thirty years in development, with Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson and Tom Waits on voices. All that exists right now is the test-screening reaction and the response to the Comic-Con footage, both very strong, plus Bird’s own record: The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille.
Thirty years in development is usually a warning.
No reviews to absorb on the way in. No consensus already formed. Just the lights turning down low.
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LFF 2026: the 12 films I’ve booked, and why
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