Four films linked to the Middle East and North Africa are part of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival's official selection, with works by Asghar Farhadi, Arthur Harari, Laila Marrakchi and Rakan Mayasi set to screen across the Competition and Un Certain Regard sections.
Farhadi returns to Competition with Parallel Tales. The Iranian director, best known for his 2011 film A Separation, is a familiar name at Cannes, having previously screened The Past in Competition in 2013, won Best Screenplay and Best Actor for The Salesman in 2016, and taken the Grand Prix for A Hero in 2021. He also served on the Cannes jury in 2022.
Farhadi faced controversy in 2022, when his film A Hero was accused of plagiarism from a former student, although the filmmaker denied the charge.
Harari is also in Competition with The Unknown. The Egyptian-French filmmaker won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay with Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall after debuting in Cannes' main competition in 2023. This is his second selection as a director, following his film Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle, which screened in the festival's Un Certain Regard section in 2021.
In this year's Un Certain Regard, Marrakchi will present La mas dulce. The Moroccan director first screened at Cannes in 2005, when her debut feature Marock played in the same section. She later directed Rock the Casbah and worked on television projects including The Eddy.
La mas dulce, her third feature, follows two young Moroccan women who travel to southern Spain for seasonal strawberry-picking work and decide to report the abuse and harassment they face.
Mayasi’s Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep has also been selected for Un Certain Regard. It is the first feature by the Palestinian filmmaker, who was born in Germany and is based between Brussels and Beirut. He previously made a number of short films. Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep is set in the Bekaa Valley and centres on the search for a missing girl.
This year’s festival will be led by Park Chan-wook, the first South Korean director to preside over the Cannes jury.
Cannes Film Festival is from May 12 to 23
