The Cannes Classics sidebar will this year feature documentaries on cinema and its history, highlighting major figures such as Bruce Dern, David Lean, Vittorio De Sica, and Chris Marker, as well as Mark Cousins’ latest episode in his continuing series on the history of documentary filmmaking, this time focusing on the 1970s. The section also includes a documentary appraisal of French stand-up comedian, film actor, activist and philanthropist, Coluche.
These films will compete for the L’Œil d’Or award presented during the awards ceremony of the 79th Festival de Cannes.
Also selected for Cannes Classics 2026 is A Life, A Manifesto, which retraces the extraordinary fate of film critic Michèle Firk who was “entirely emancipated from rules of time, a free lover, enamoured with cinema and revolution.”
CANNES CLASSICS 2026 DOCUMENTARY SELECTION 2026 (annotations supplied by festival)
- THE STORY OF DOCUMENTARY FILM (THE 70s) by Mark Cousins, 2026, 1h58, United Kingdom. A Hopscotch Films Production. Sales by Dogwoof. From Mark Cousins, creator of the groundbreaking The Story of Film: A New Generation & Women Make Film, comes the definitive history of documentary. Tracing the evolution of documentary film across time, encompassing landmark works and hidden treasures, while revealing how the form has helped us see and make sense of our world.
- DERNSIE: THE AMAZING LIFE OF BRUCE DERN by Mike Mendez. 2026, 1h51, United States. A Stolen Lamp Pictures, Skylight Cinema, AFG Productions, and Lumiere Lab production. DERNSIE is an intimate portrait of Bruce Dern—tireless, uncompromising, and one of the last living legends of his generation—whose endurance has shaped both a turbulent life and one of Hollywood’s most enduring careers. A relentless runner on and off screen, Dern has outlasted the very industry that defined him…Featuring candid interviews with Quentin Tarantino, Alexander Payne, Billy Bob Thornton, Walton Goggins, Walter Hill, Fred Specktor, Patty Jenkins, Will Forte, Joe Dante, and Laura Dern.
- MAVERICK: THE EPIC ADVENTURES OF DAVID LEAN by Barnaby Thompson. 2026, 1h51, United States, 1h44, United Kingdom / United States. A Fragile Films/Embankment Films/Assemble Media production for Sky Arts. David Lean was one of the greatest film directors of all time. He redefined what movies could be, but his singular vision and dogged determination to film the impossible gained him the reputation of being an obsessive maverick. He was a master of his art, able to create love and beauty on screen, but whose own life was often messy, rootless, and painful. An in-depth study of the man and his films. Narrated by Cate Blanchett, Kenneth Branagh is the voice of Lean, and featuring interviews with contemporary directors including Wes Anderson, Paul Greengrass, Alfonso Cuaron, Celine Song, Brady Corbet, Francis Ford Coppola, Denis Villeneuve, Nia DaCosta and Joe Wright.
- VITTORIO DE SICA – STAGING LIFE (VITTORIO DE SICA – LA VITA IN SCENA) by Francesco Zippel. 2026, 1h40, Italy. A Quoiat Films, production, in association with Luce Cinecittà, Movimenti Production and Sky. A documentary feature film about Vittorio De Sica, one of the greatest masters of world cinema. Through a new access to his family, rare archives and testimonies of contemporary artists and filmmakers from the entire world, the ilm retraces his life, his work and legacy. An intimate portrait of an author able to transform the observation of the real in an universal emotion and reveals the modernity of a gaze which keeps on illuminating cinema and our way of seeing the world.
- MON COLUCHE A MOI (MY COLUCHE) by Michel Denisot, Camille Bruere and Julie Lazare. 1h35, France. A Bangumi production. It’s the story of two guys — a comedian and a journalist — who become friends and get up to all sorts of antics. It’s the story of two men reflecting their era. It’s the story of one man, Coluche, seen through the eyes of his friend, Michel Denisot. It’s the story of his Coluche. For more than twenty years, Coluche shaped the French television and comedy landscape. He made us laugh, cry, jump out of our seats; he made us more engaged, perhaps even more free.
- NOSTALGIA FOR THE FUTURE by Brecht Debackere. 2026, 1h15, Belgium. A Visualantics, Seriousfilm, Cobra Films, and Ghirigori production. Guided by the evocative narration of Charlotte Rampling, Nostalgia for the Future is a descent into the labyrinthine world of Chris Marker, the “best-known author of unknown films” who spent a lifetime concealing himself behind a veil of pseudonyms and images of cats. Moving through a constellation of personal documents and film fragments, an archivist attempts to decode the man through the material traces he left behind. By repurposing and recontextualizing Marker’s own body of work, the film treats his images as “time machines,” transforming the archive into a living, breathing landscape. Nostalgia for the future is a challenging inquiry into memory, identity, and the shadows that our past representations cast upon the future.
- UNE VIE MANIFESTE (A LIFE, A MANIFESTO) by Jean-Gabriel Périot. 2026, 1h26, France. An Envie de Tempête, Les Films de Pierre production, coproduced by ARTE France and INA. French Distribution: Potemkine Films. Documentary feature film about Michèle Firk, film critic (eight years writing for Positif), aspiring director and revolutionary activist, who never stopped defending justice and freedom. A Life, A Manifesto retraces the extraordinary fate of a woman entirely emancipated from rules of time, a free lover, enamoured with cinema and revolution.
