In Waves, Phuong Mai Nguyen’s animated adaptation of AJ Dungo’s cult graphic novel, will open the 65th edition of Cannes Critics’ Week, the sidebar that runs alongside the main Cannes festival from May 13 to 21. It was one of the 11 features making up this year’s selection, announced on Monday. (Full Critics’ Week lineup below).
Will Sharpe and Stephanie Hsu head up the voice cast for the English-language version of In Waves. Critics’ Week plans to show both that and the French version, which features voice work from Lyna Khoudri, Rio Vega, Paul Kirscher and Biran Ba.
Inspired by Dungo’s own, real-life love story, In Waves is set in California and follows a skateboarder and a surfer, friends from school who later become lovers and find their relationship tested by illness.
The feature, produced by French group Silex Films together with Charades and Anonymous Content, is the first animated film to open Critics’ Week. Nguyen was Oscar-shortlisted for her short My Home.
In Waves is one of seven features picked for Cannes Critics’ Week competition, which also includes Dua, the new film from Kosovan director Blerta Basholli, who won the Sundance Grand Jury prize with Hive in 2021. The film looks at the lasting impact of the Kosovo War of the 1990s through the story of Dua, a 13-year girl whose family life continues to be shaped by the conflict.
Chinese director Zou Jing’s A Girl Unknown, another competition entry, explores the known exploring the implications of the China’s decades-long one-child policy, which resulted in thousands of baby girls being abandoned across the country. The drama follows a girl who grows up with three different families across her infancy and adolescence.
Scottish Yemeni director Sara Ishaq made the Critics’ Week cut with The Station, a drama centered on a women-only gas station in a gender-segregated, and war-torn village in Yemen. The only male who is tolerated at the station, which becomes a special meeting place for the women of the villages, is Layal’s 12-year-old brother, who she is determined to keep out of the conflict.
Also in competition are Mexican director Bruno Santamaria Razo’s 6 Meses En El Edificio Rosa Con Azul, a 1990s-set family drama set against the AIDS crisis and French director Marine Atlan’s first feature La Gradiva; and Viva, from Spanish actress-turned-director Aina Clotet.
French Irish director Alexander Murphy’s documentary Tin Castle about an Irish traveller family, Murphy’s follow-up to 2025′ Goodbye Sisters, is also in competition.
The seven competition films are in the running for the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award and the Le Grand Prix AMI Paris.
Out Of Competition special sceenings include French directors Julien Gaspar-Oliveri’s Stonewall and Pierre Le Gall’s Flesh and Fuel.
The closing night film is French director Félix de Givry’s Adieu Monde Cruel, starring Anatomy of a Fall breakout Milo Machado-Graner as a teenager who, after declaring to family and friends he will commit suicide, fails in the attempt.
Full 2026 Cannes Critics’ Week Lineup below.
Opening Film
In Waves; director: Phuong Mai Nguyen
Competition
The Station (Al Mahattah); director: Blerta Basholli
La Gradiva; director: Marine Atlan
A Girl Unknown (La deuxième fille); director: ZOU Jing
Seis meses en el edificio rosa con azul; director: Bruno Santamaría Razo
Tin Castle (Irish Travellers); director: Alexander Murphy
Viva; director: Aina Clotet
Special Screenings
Flesh and Fuel (Du Fioul dans les artères); director: Pierre Le Gall
Stonewall (La Frappe); director: Julien Gaspar-Oliveri
Closing Film
Adieu monde cruel; director: Felix De Givry
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