Hamaguchi signs the first masterpiece of Cannes 2026

Special envoy to the Cannes Film FestivalWhat a brave and exciting film directed by the Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Soudain, which premiered this Friday in the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival, has the audacity to take all the time and words it needs to reflect on a topic as uncinematic as care for people with neurological diseases, and it does so through a beautiful story of friendship between two women, the director of a nursing home in Paris who introduces a new humanitarian philosophy in the center (Virginie Efira) and a Japanese theater director with terminal breast cancer (Tao Okamoto).

Hamaguchi, the director who loves words the most and best films dialogues in current cinema, dares to trust in the power of cinema as a dialectical art to the point of dedicating a monologue of more than ten minutes to clearly explain the structural failure of capitalism – with graphics included – but this is a film of conversations that stretch for hours and in which, basically, two women try to answer the question "Who are you?". A masterful film of simple and profound humanism and, of course, the first great favorite for the Palme d'Or at this edition.

It should be emphasized that Soudain with another torrential film by Hamaguchi, the Oscar-winning The prominence of theater in the plot – through the experimental play that the playwright performs in Paris and which has enabled the meeting of the two protagonists – and the more than three hours of duration connect Soudain with another torrential film by Hamaguchi, the Oscar-winning Drive my car, but the Japanese director's new film is much brighter and more open to the world, and profoundly political in its advocacy for more humane treatment of the sick that respects the dignity and integrity of individuals. Furthermore, it integrates all its reflections organically into the main story of the protagonists, thus recovering the almost lost possibility of intellectual cinema that reflects on our world without sacrificing the beauty and emotion of being alive.