Spanish directors Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo received the best direction prize at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival for La bola negra, shared ex aequo with Pawel Pawlikowski for Fatherland. Cristian Mungiu won the Palme d'Or for Fjord.
The 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival concluded on May 23, 2026, with the awards ceremony at the Palais des Festivals. La bola negra, which explores Federico García Lorca through three connected stories tied by queer memory, was the only Spanish film in competition to enter the palmarès.
Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo accepted the award emotionally. "For all the homosexuals who have suffered in the past and so that this pain does not pass to successive generations," Ambrossi said. Calvo added: "Art is a vehicle of empathy, of recognition of the other".
Cristian Mungiu secured his second Palme d'Or with Fjord, a film about a religious family in Norway that addresses intolerance. The Grand Prix went to Minotaur, by Andrey Zvyagintsev. The Jury Prize went to The Dreamed Adventure, by Valeska Grisebach.
