– CANNES 2026: An overview of acquisitions, sales, new films and more unveiled at the Cannes market, taking place from 12-20 May
Isabelle Huppert (© Marie Rouge/Unifrance), Dali Benssalah (© Marie Rouge/Unifrance), Adam Bessa (© Unifrance) and Raye (© Mathieu Bitton), who will star in Yann Demange’s Lineage
This article will be updated regularly during Cannes’ Marché du Film, taking place from 13-21 May.
French-born, UK-based filmmaker Yann Demange, who competed at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2014 with ’71, is set to begin shooting Lineage in early August, with Isabelle Huppert, Dali Benssalah, Adam Bessa and singer Raye among the cast. Written by Enda Walsh from an idea by the director, the screenplay is set in today’s multicultural London and follows Tariq, a man trying to rebuild his life after serving a prison sentence and striving to create a new future for himself and his young son, Amine. But when his brother asks for help, Tariq is drawn back into London’s criminal underworld and into the dangerous orbit of their mother, a gang leader. The return threatens everything he has built, forcing him to confront his family loyalties and the legacy of violence that has shaped his life… The film will be produced by the British companies Wayward Films and Crab Apple Films, alongside the French outfits Carrousel Studios and Why Not Productions, and Belgian company Beside Productions, with support from LPI, Lumina Studios and BBC Film. International sales are being handled by The Veterans, the US-based outfit founded by Vincent Maraval and Kim Fox.
StudioCanal has launched pre-sales for The Midnight Library, directed by Australian filmmaker Garth Davis and starring British actress Florence Pugh. Adapted by Laura Wade and Nick Payne from the eponymous novel by Matt Haig, the screenplay follows Nora Seed, who finds herself suspended between life and death in a library with the chance to experience all the potential lives she could have lived. Filming is set to begin in early 2027, with production led by Blueprint Pictures alongside Anita Overland and Florence Pugh herself.
StudioCanal is launching sales for a biopic (as-yet-untitled) directed by Maïmouna Doucouré (Cuties, Hawa) about Joséphine Baker, the American-born artist who became an iconic figure of 1920s Paris during the Roaring Twenties. She will be portrayed by British musician FKA twigs. Filming for the project, produced by Studiocanal and Bien ou Bien Productions, is scheduled to take place this autumn. StudioCanal will distribute the film in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, the Benelux territories, Poland, Australia and New Zealand.
Polish-Swedish filmmaker Magnus von Horn (the Oscar-nominated The Girl with the Needle, Sweat) is readying The Passenger, his fourth feature and his first in English. The movie is a historical escape thriller and an adaptation of the eponymous 1938 novel by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, which received positive reviews for portraying the atmosphere of antisemitic persecution in Nazi Germany in the wake of World War II. The story revolves around established businessman Otto Silbermann, who must flee Berlin after the Night of Broken Glass pogroms. US thesp Jeremy Strong (Succession, The Apprentice) will play the lead, while the rest of the cast is being kept under wraps (read full news). [Variety]
