• In Waves, directed by Phuong Mai Nguyen, opened the Critics’ Week section at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival
• The film adapts AJ Dungo’s 2019 graphic novel about his real-life relationship with a girlfriend who was diagnosed with cancer
• Will Sharpe and Stephanie Hsu voice the leads in the English version; a French version with Rio Vega and Lyna Khoudri is set for July release
• The film is currently without a U.S. distributor but is generating significant awards-season buzz out of Cannes
• Reviews are largely warm, praising its gorgeous hand-drawn animation, though some critics take issue with its familiar story beats

There’s a moment in In Waves where a boy skateboards home alone in the rain, completely elated, and it’s so joyful and so specific and so obviously doomed that you already feel the ache before the movie even gets there. That’s the particular kind of emotional intelligence running through Phuong Mai Nguyen’s stunning animated feature debut — a film that knows exactly what it is and commits to it completely.

The film opened the Critics’ Week section of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, making history as the first animated title to do so, and it arrives as a beautifully rendered adaptation of AJ Dungo’s 2019 graphic novel. Scripted by Fanny Burdino and Samuel Doux, it tells the true story of AJ and Kristen — two Los Angeles high school students who fall in love across the divide of a skateboard and a surfboard. AJ (voiced in English by Will Sharpe) is shy, artistic, and deeply aquaphobic. Kristen (Stephanie Hsu) is confident, luminous, and spiritually connected to the ocean in a way that borders on devotional. He literally knocks her over at a school dance. She drags him into the water anyway.

The courtship is rendered with real tenderness — their first kiss under an inky night sky, the agonizing suspension of time after a text is sent to someone you can’t stop thinking about, their FaceTime chats and forbidden late-night meet-ups. Nguyen captures the particular electricity of being young and falling hard with a sun-kissed watercolor palette that makes Southern California feel like a place where anything is possible. The sight of AJ skateboarding home in the rain after that first kiss would, as one critic put it, make Gene Kelly proud.

A Love Story Built on Waves — and History

What sets In Waves apart from a standard YA romance is Kristen’s deep reverence for surfing’s history and cultural roots. She prays to a statue of Duke Kahanamoku — the Native Hawaiian Olympic swimmer she credits with popularizing surfing after Christian missionaries colonized Hawaii and banned the practice. That history is woven into the film through striking black-and-white sequences drawn in the style of pen-and-ink illustration, depicting pre-colonial Hawaiian surfing rituals. In one genuinely breathtaking moment, the curves of ocean waves, tree bark, and Kristen’s hair swirl together in one unified visual poem.

These monochrome interludes also become AJ’s art school thesis — the lines between Dungo’s original drawings and Nguyen’s visual world deliberately blurring as the story progresses. A third timeline, drained of color, follows a solitary AJ living in a van on the beach, sketching the ocean and Kristen’s face. It’s meant to feel mysterious, though most viewers will read where it’s heading fairly quickly.

Alongside Kristen and AJ, a tight friend group forms — her brother Jeff (Griffin Puatu), cousin Eon (Johnny Young), and AJ’s best friend Francisco (Alejandro Antonio Ruiz), whose awkward driveway goodbye when he moves away is one of the screenplay’s most quietly perfect moments of adolescent feeling.

When the Wave Breaks

The shift, when it comes, is masterfully handled. A middle-of-the-night crisis — Kristen immobilized by pain in her leg — snaps the film’s warm expansiveness shut. The cancer diagnosis that follows is all the more devastating for how thoroughly Nguyen has made us fall for these two people first.

From there, In Waves walks every step of Kristen’s journey — through hospitals and clinics, through the decision to amputate her leg and learn to surf again with a prosthetic, through the cancer’s return and the reshuffling of everything. AJ earns the trust of her protective parents. The couple fights about sacrifice and the future. They take a road trip up the Pacific coast — icy, beautiful, terrifying — to make memories on Kristen’s own terms. Nguyen captures the mossy textures and vibrant exuberance of the Pacific Northwest with genuine delicacy.

Sharpe and Hsu are warm and committed throughout, though a few critics have noted that their upbeat energy occasionally sits at a slight remove from the film’s deeper melancholy — a byproduct, perhaps, of the fact that the film was originally recorded in French with a different cast. The French version, featuring Rio Vega and Lyna Khoudri, is scheduled for release in France and Belgium in July.

Where Critics Land

The reviews out of Cannes are largely enthusiastic, with most landing somewhere between admiring and genuinely moved. The Hollywood Reporter called it “an understated marvel” with “a strong emotional throughline,” praising the way Nguyen “strikes a fine balance between narrative and visual language.” Variety noted that the film “honors every step of Kristen’s journey” and avoids the trap that sinks similarly themed films — never making Kristen’s illness merely a vehicle for AJ’s coming-of-age. “His grief over Kristen touches and bruises our souls,” the review noted, “precisely because we get to know her endearing idiosyncrasies on a uniquely personal level.”

The more skeptical take comes from IndieWire, which acknowledged the gorgeous animation but argued the film leans too hard on familiar “sick-girl-inspires-artist” tropes and never fully escapes AJ’s adoring gaze to give Kristen a fully independent interior life. “His version of Kristen,” the review observed, “without any of her interiority.” The film’s closing voiceover — in which AJ reflects that grief, like the ocean, comes in waves and must be ridden — landed as profound for some and a bit fortune-cookie for others.

Both responses feel honest, and both can be true simultaneously. In Waves is, by design, an unapologetically conventional tearjerker. It knows the wave is coming. It wants you to stand there and let it hit you anyway.

The film is currently without a U.S. distributor, which feels like a gap that won’t last long. Nguyen — whose previous credits include the French animated series Culottées and storyboard work on The Ollie & Moon Show — has made something that works both as a visual showcase and as a deeply human love story. Whether it finds its audience among YA fans, animation devotees, or anyone who’s ever lost someone and felt the grief come back in unexpected surges, there’s a real crowd here waiting to be found.

AJ Dungo asked his girlfriend to let him tell their story. She said yes. This is what that looks like.

The post ‘In Waves’ Is the Animated Tearjerker You Need to See appeared first on Cream.

• Bong Joon Ho’s first animated film Ally has revealed its voice cast, led by Bradley Cooper, Ayo Edebiri, Dave Bautista, Finn Wolfhard, Rachel House, and Werner Herzog.
• Newcomer Alex Jayne Go headlines the announcement and is believed to be voicing the title character — a curious piglet squid living in the South Pacific depths.
• Neon will release the film in North American theaters, reuniting the indie distributor with Bong following their history-making run with Parasite.
• The film carries a reported budget of around $60 million, which would make it the most expensive Korean-produced feature ever made.
• Ally is targeting a 2027 global theatrical release, with animation handled by VFX powerhouse DNEG.

Bong Joon Ho has been quietly building something extraordinary beneath the ocean — and now we know who’s giving it a voice. The Oscar-winning director of Parasite unveiled the voice cast for his first animated feature, Ally, on the opening day of the Cannes Film Festival, and the lineup is genuinely surprising: Bradley Cooper, Ayo Edebiri, Dave Bautista, Finn Wolfhard, Rachel House, Werner Herzog, and newcomer Alex Jayne Go.

Go leads the casting announcement, which strongly suggests she’s voicing Ally herself — a curious, endearing piglet squid living in the uncharted depths of the South Pacific Ocean. Ally dreams of one day seeing the sun and becoming the star of a wildlife documentary. When a mysterious aircraft sinks into her habitat, her peaceful world is thrown into chaos, and she’s thrust into an epic journey to the surface alongside a colorful cast of unlikely companions. The film explores themes of friendship and courage, with encounters between the creatures of the deep and the human world reshaping both sides.

A Dream Cast for a Dream Project

Bong has been developing Ally since 2019, and the passion project has clearly attracted serious talent. Cooper, a 12-time Oscar nominee, returns to animated voice work for the first time since playing Rocket Raccoon across Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. Edebiri, fresh off her The Bear breakout, is also at Cannes this week for the premiere of Clarissa — another Neon title — in the Directors’ Fortnight section. Bautista brings his Dune gravitas, Wolfhard his Stranger Things familiarity, and House, who voiced a memorable role in Moana, adds yet more animated pedigree to the ensemble.

And then there’s Werner Herzog. The legendary German filmmaker’s deeply accented Bavarian baritone joining a family animated adventure about a piglet squid is exactly the kind of casting choice that makes Bong Joon Ho unmistakably Bong Joon Ho.

The screenplay was co-written by Bong and Jason Yu, the South Korean filmmaker behind the 2023 horror film Sleep. Producing is Seo Woo-sik, a frequent Bong collaborator who also produced Mother (2009) and Okja (2017).

The Team Behind the Visuals

The 3D animation is being handled by DNEG, the VFX studio behind Inception and Dune, with a creative team drawing from 12 countries. Animation supervisor Jae Hyung Kim worked on Toy Story 4 and Inside Out. David Lipman, a veteran of the Shrek franchise, serves as supervising producer. And production designer Marcin Jakubowski comes from the acclaimed Netflix animated film Klaus. The pedigree here is serious.

Korean industry sources have pegged Ally‘s budget at around $60 million — which would make it the most expensive feature ever produced in South Korea. That number alone signals how much ambition is behind this project.

Neon and Bong, Reunited

Neon has signed on to release Ally in North American theaters in 2027, reuniting the indie distributor with the director whose Parasite they released in 2019 — the film that became the first non-English-language movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Outside North America, Pathé will handle France, Benelux, Switzerland, and West Africa, while CJ ENM and Penture Invest will cover South Korea, Vietnam, Turkey, and Indonesia. Pathé is also overseeing international sales at Cannes this week, with the exception of Japan and China.

The film is targeting completion in the first half of 2027, ahead of its global theatrical release later that year. For a director whose last live-action feature, Mickey 17, arrived earlier this year, Ally represents something different — a plunge into an entirely new medium, set in the darkest depths of the ocean, with one of the most eclectic voice casts assembled in recent memory. Werner Herzog and a piglet squid. Only Bong.

The post Bradley Cooper, Ayo Edebiri Join Bong Joon Ho’s ‘Ally’ appeared first on Cream.

• The 2026 Cannes Film Festival runs May 12–23 and features a small but remarkably diverse slate of animated films.
• French 2D feature Fallen, from Pixar alum Louis Clichy, is the early frontrunner for awards attention among the animated offerings.
• Directors’ Fortnight opens with an animated film for the first time ever — In Waves from director Phuong Mai Nguyen.
• Midnight screening Jim Queen and the Quest for Chloroqueer is shaping up to be the festival’s most daring animated entry.
• Several films are expected to continue on to Annecy in June, following the same path that led Flow to its surprise Oscar win.

Cannes has never been the most reliable home for animation — some years the Croisette delivers, some years it doesn’t — but lately the French Riviera has quietly become one of the most important launching pads for animated films with Oscar ambitions. In 2024, the tiny Latvian indie Flow premiered in Un Certain Regard, built a head of steam through the year on the back of rave reviews, and ended up winning Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards. Last year, Arco and Little Amélie or the Character of Rain — both Cannes premieres — made it all the way to nominations.

The 79th Cannes Film Festival, which opens May 12 and closes May 23, doesn’t have a massive animated lineup in 2026. But what it does have is genuinely interesting: a wide range of styles, tones, and ambitions that spans prestige drama, family adventure, queer midnight cinema, and everything in between.

The One to Watch for Awards Season

The animated film most likely to follow in Flow‘s footsteps is Fallen, a French 2D feature from director Louis Clichy. If that name sounds familiar to animation fans, it should — Clichy is a Pixar alum who worked on WALL-E and Up before returning to France to direct two Asterix films. This is his third feature, and it marks a shift: a sketchbook-style 2D aesthetic that looks genuinely charming, wrapped around the story of a young boy who wears an iron corset to stand upright and escapes his strict farm life to find a love of music. It’s the kind of warm, emotionally accessible story that tends to resonate with audiences and awards voters alike. If the reviews hold up, Fallen could be the one to circle on your Oscar ballot as early as May.

The Films Heading to Annecy Next

Two Cannes Special Screenings are also expected to compete at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June — the same route Arco and Little Amélie traveled last year on their way to Oscar nominations.

Tangles is the debut feature from Canadian director Leah Nelson, adapted from Sarah Leavitt’s graphic memoir about a daughter who comes home to care for her mother after an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. It’s a deeply personal source story, and the kind of subject matter that tends to land hard when animation gets it right. The other is Lucy Lost from Oliver Clert, a more family-friendly adventure set in 1915 Sicily, following a young orphan who sets out to uncover the truth behind her mysterious visions. Two very different films, but both carrying real potential.

The Wildcard Everyone Should Know About

The most exciting — and least predictable — animated entry at this year’s festival is playing as a Midnight screening, which tells you everything you need to know about its energy. Jim Queen and the Quest for Chloroqueer is a retro 2D indie from debut directors Marco Nguyen and Nicolas Athané, and its premise is exactly as audacious as the title suggests: a hunky gay influencer and a twink team up to find a cure for a disease that turns gay men straight. It sounds unabashedly camp, visually gorgeous, and unlike anything that has ever gotten serious awards traction in the animation space. Whether it finds that traction is almost beside the point — this is exactly the kind of film festivals exist to surface.

Beyond the Main Festival

Cannes extends well beyond its main competition, and the parallel sections this year have some genuinely notable animated entries too. Directors’ Fortnight — which runs alongside the main festival on the Croisette — is opening with In Waves, a French animated feature from director Phuong Mai Nguyen about a romance between a surfer and a skateboarder. It’s the first animated film ever to open Fortnight, and it will screen in both English and French. That’s a milestone worth paying attention to.

The Fortnight will also close with Le vertige, from French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux — the deadpan provocateur behind Rubber and Smoking Causes Coughing — about a man who discovers his entire world is a simulation, rendered in animation that deliberately looks like a PS2 game. Very on brand. Other selections in the mix include the Japanese rotoscope film We Are Aliens and Viva Carmen!, an adaptation of the famous opera from Chicken for Linda! director Sébastien Laudenbach.

Not all of these films will be great. Some may not even find U.S. distribution. But that’s always been the deal with Cannes — you show up, the lights go down, and something you’ve never heard of might just change the way you think about what animation can be. A few of these could be that film. We’ll find out starting May 12.

The post Every Animated Film to Watch at Cannes 2026 appeared first on Cream.