Cristian Mungiu's Fjord wins Palme d'Or

Cristian Mungiu’s *Fjord* won the Palme d’Or at the 79th Cannes Film Festival on May 24, giving the Romanian director a second top prize at Cannes after his 2007 win for *4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days*. Festival organizers published the result on their official winners coverage after the closing ceremony in Cannes. The 2026 festival ran from May 12 to May 24, and the feature-film jury was led by South Korean director Park Chan-wook. ### Who won the top prizes besides *Fjord*? Andrei Zviaguintsev’s *Minotaur* won the Grand Prix, the festival’s second-highest award, according to Cannes’ official winners coverage and festival reporting published after the ceremony. Pawel Pawlikowski won best director for *Fatherland*, while Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo shared the screenplay prize for *The Black Ball*. (festival-cannes.com) The official Competition lineup shows that *Fjord*, *Minotaur*, *Fatherland* and *The Black Ball* were all part of the main Cannes competition this year. Cannes listed *Fjord* among 2026 Competition titles alongside films by Pedro Almodóvar, Asghar Farhadi, Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Hirokazu Kore-eda. ### Why is this a notable Cannes result for Mungiu? (festival-cannes.com) Cristian Mungiu had already won the Palme d’Or once before, in 2007, and Cannes’ own festival profile for *Fjord* noted that the 2026 film marked his return to Competition nearly 20 years later. RogerEbert.com, reporting from the festival, said the prize made *Fjord* Mungiu’s second Palme. (festival-cannes.com) Cannes described *Fjord* as Mungiu’s first foreign-language film. The festival’s film page lists it as a 146-minute production from Romania, France, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, with Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve in the cast. ### What is *Fjord* about? RogerEbert.com described *Fjord* as a drama about a Romanian family targeted by child services in Norway. (festival-cannes.com) Cannes’ festival profile said the film uses a Norwegian setting and centers on a Scandinavian landscape that Mungiu turns into a site of tension and fracture. The Cannes film page identifies Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, Lisa Carlehed, Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Henrikke Lund-Olsen and Vanessa Ceban among the cast. (festival-cannes.com) Tudor Vladimir Panduru is credited for cinematography and Constantin Fleancu for editing. ### Who picked the winners this year? Park Chan-wook served as president of the feature-film jury, Cannes said in its official awards coverage. (rogerebert.com) The festival listed the other jury members as Demi Moore, Ruth Negga, Laura Wandel, Diego Céspedes, Isaach de Bankolé, Paul Laverty, Chloé Zhao and Stellan Skarsgård. RogerEbert.com quoted Park as saying the jurors had spent the festival discussing “films by diverse personalities” with “jurors with diverse personalities.” Cannes also published a winners press conference page featuring Mungiu and the other prize recipients after the ceremony. (festival-cannes.com) ### Where can readers track what comes next for the winners? (festival-cannes.com) Cannes’ official winners page and post-ceremony press conference page now serve as the festival’s primary public record for the 2026 awards. The festival’s selection page also keeps the full Competition lineup, including *Fjord*, *Minotaur* and *Fatherland*, in one place for follow-up coverage and distribution tracking. (festival-cannes.com) (rogerebert.com)