The Cannes Classics strand returns as the festival’s place for film heritage, where painstaking restorations sit alongside freshly commissioned work. This year’s selection underlines why the section is prized: a mix of underseen first works, recovered sequences and high-profile restorations headline a program that reads like a curator’s dream. Alongside celebrated titles such as Sanshiro Sugata by Akira Kurosawa, The Innocent by Luchino Visconti, and The Stranger by Orson Welles, the roster includes a long-awaited, negative-based restoration of Ken Russell’s The Devils, signalling the return of a controversial classic in its intended form. The section blends archival scholarship with cinematic spectacle and invites audiences to reconsider film history.
Program notes emphasize both preservation practice and contemporary perspective. The lineup highlights the restoration of five films by Artavazd Pelechian and announces the inclusion of Eva by Maria Plyta into the World Cinema Project curated by Martin Scorsese. On the new-work side, two added features—The Golden Age (Bérenger Thouin, 2026, 1h53) and A Life, A Manifesto (Jean-Gabriel Périot, 2026, 1h26)—offer female-centered life stories rendered with archival and documentary techniques. The program also makes room for contemporary shorts and a number of film-history documentaries vying for the festival’s L’Œil d’Or award.
New features and contemporary shorts
Two recent films join the Classics selection as contemporary additions. The Golden Age (Bérenger Thouin, 2026, 1h53) traces the extraordinary arc of Jeanne Lavaur across the twentieth century, combining dramatized episodes with repurposed archival material and anchored by performances from Souheila Yacoub, Vassili Schneider and Yile Yara Vianello. The screening includes the film’s principal cast and creative team. In documentary form, A Life, A Manifesto (Jean-Gabriel Périot, 2026, 1h26) chronicles the life and politics of critic-turned-activist Michèle Firk, weaving together criticism, cinema and militant commitment. Both films foreground women who shaped cultural and political moments, and both will be presented with their makers in attendance.
Shorts program and contemporary highlights
The Classics slate also programs a short-film block featuring three recent works. Torino Shadow (Jia Zhang-Ke, 2026, 32mn) follows a woman’s journey from southern China to Turin and explores memory and cinema; director Jia Zhang-Ke and actress Zhao Tao will attend. From the visual-arts world, GOODNIGHT LAMBY (Dustin Yellin, 2026, 15min) stars Paul Rudd and Zia Copernicus Yellin and stages a child’s fantastical search through sculptural dreamscapes; the screening presents director Dustin Yellin with producer Darren Aronofsky. Finally, PLAYGROUND (Amirhossein Shojaei, 2026, 15mn) confronts a startling parental choice and its uncanny aftermath, with the director and producer present for Q&A. These shorts balance intimate storytelling with formal risk.
Documentary program and festival competition
Cannes Classics frames a rich documentary lineup focused on cinema itself. Mark Cousins’ The Story of Documentary Film (The 1970s) (2026, 1h58) offers a wide-ranging account of the form’s evolution, while DERNSIE: The Amazing Life of Bruce Dern (Mike Mendez, 2026, 1h51) presents a long-form portrait of the actor drawn from extensive conversations and archival material; both films will screen with their directors and key contributors. Other notable entries include MAVERICK: The Epic Adventures of David Lean (Barnaby Thompson, 2026, 1h44), a study narrated by Cate Blanchett that collects testimony from contemporary directors, and intimate portraits of figures such as Vittorio De Sica and the comedian Coluche. These works compete for the festival’s documentary prize and underscore Cannes Classics’ interest in film history as living debate.
Restorations, restored copies and archival initiatives
Notable restorations
Restoration work is central to the program. Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006, 1h58) returns in a newly completed 4K restoration produced from the original negative, and will screen as a pre-opening selection on Tuesday, May 12 at 2:30 PM in the Debussy Theater with Guillermo del Toro present. Ken Russell’s The Devils was reconstructed from the original camera negative in a 4K transfer supervised by Warner Bros.; the restored print and sound were prepared by major post houses and will be introduced by historian Mark Kermode alongside Elisabeth Russell. Sanshiro Sugata (Akira Kurosawa, 1943, 1h31) receives a new digital restoration that restores a 12-minute sequence long thought lost. The program also showcases the Pelechian Project, a four-film restoration supervised by Artavazd Pelechian and carried out in partnership with Cineteca di Bologna and L’Immagine Ritrovata.
Restoration houses and international presentations
Across the Classics roster, restoration partners and national archives are credited for their technical work and historical stewardship: the World Cinema Project (The Film Foundation) and Cineteca di Bologna for Eva, the Cinémathèque française and Library of Congress for The Stranger, and numerous laboratories such as L’Immagine Ritrovata and TransPerfect Media for color grading and audio reconstruction. Complementing the major titles are restored prints of works including Espoir (Sierra de Teruel), Moonlighting, Metti una sera a cena, Amma Ariyan, Farewell My Concubine, Man of Iron, La Casa del Angel, and Two Women, many of which will be presented with restorers or relatives of the filmmakers, offering audiences rich context about preservation practice and film culture.