Cannes 2026: Cristian Mungiu wins second Palme d’Or with ‘Fjord’
Some 19 years after bagging his first Palme d’Or at Cannes with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Romanian director Cristian Mungiu has once again been awarded the top prize for his child abuse drama, Fjord.
The film stars Worst Person in the World actor Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan as Romanian religious parents who relocate to Norway. There, they find themselves accused of child abuse after raising their child under a strict regimen, which was otherwise usual in their Romanian Pentecostal circles.
Second place to Mungiu’s new movie was Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur, a darker portrait of society that examined corruption and infidelity in contemporary Russia.
In third, Valeska Grisebach’s The Dreamed Adventure is a drama about an archaeologist set in Bulgaria.
This year, the two US films in the competition received no nods from the judges. Therefore, James Gray’s Paper Tiger, starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, and Ira Sachs’ Aids musical The Man I Love, starring Rami Malek, went home with no prizes to show.
Thanks to the win, the 58-year-old director is now the 10th filmmaker to receive two Palmes, following Alf Sjöberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Bille August, Emir Kusturica, Shōhei Imamura, the Dardenne brothers, Michael Haneke, Ken Loach and Ruben Östlund.
This year marks the seventh consecutive Cannes where US distributor Neon has acquired the rights to the film in the top spot. Last year, Sean Baker’s 2024 Palme d’Or winner Anora triumphed at the Oscars.
This year’s jury was presided over by No Other Choice titan Park Chan-wook; he led an impressive team, including Demi Moore, Stellan Skarsgård, Chloé Zhao and Paul Laverty, to their final decisions.
Elsewhere at the festival, the ‘Best Director Award’ was tied between Pawel Pawlikowski for Fatherland and Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi for The Black Ball.
The ‘Best Actress’ award went to Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto from Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s care drama All of a Sudden, while ‘Best Actor’ went to Valentin Campagne and Emmanuel Macchia for First World War drama Coward.
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