Fest in Show
This year's festival was in danger of flatlining. Then came writer, director, and comedian Jordan Firstman's feature debut and a five-way bidding war
A filmmaker brings their first feature to a film festival, arriving as a virtual unknown(-ish) and leaving as the belle of the ball, having brought audiences to tears and their feet, and endured a bidding war that ended with their debut fetching a seven-figure deal. It’s a tale as old as time, or at least as old as Sex, Lies and Videotape. We most often associate these types of Cinderella stories with Sundance, where literal overnight success was always just one life-changing screening at a high school auditorium away. (R.I.P., gala Eccles premieres.) We don’t normally link them to Cannes, though lord knows the prestigious French fest has minted more than its share of auteurs. They just usually tend toward future world-cinema heavy hitters, and not internet comedians best known for snarky IG missives, supporting roles on HBO shows, and penning choral odes to Laura Dern.
And yet! Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid is the closest thing to a seismic hit the king-making event has had this year, and will likely be the defining movie of the 2026 edition. Not that there haven’t been bright spots over the last week or so: Both Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden and Pawel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland are consensus best-of picks, and will likely split the top two competition prizes when everything is said and done on Friday. As for the American presence in this largely Hollywood-light year, veteran writer-directors James Gray and Ira Sachs both brought their A-games with Paper Tiger and The Man I Love, respectively. But from the moment Firstman’s story of an NYC scenester who reluctantly finds himself taking care of a tween premiered as part of the Un Certain Regard sidebar, it’s been the one film people have wanted to talk about and quote back to each other the most. Rarely has a breath of fresh air like this been so welcome on the Croisette.
