The Cannes Film Festival is going to have to walk back some of its earlier marketing this month, as Werner Herzog has just confirmed that he’s declining to premiere his new movie, Bucking Fastard, at this year’s festival. This is per Variety, which has a statement from a rep on the film, confirming that “Bucking Fastard was invited as an official selection at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival which the filmmakers declined.”
As to why, it comes down to a situation that’s been cropping up a lot at Cannes lately: Movies from big-name directors angling to be entered in competition at the festival, only to be offered a non-competition slot instead. (The same thing cropped up last year with Jake Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother; Jarmusch declined the invite and entered the movie at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion top prize.) According to sources cited by World Of Reel, Herzog wasn’t worried about his own awards shelf—though he’s never won a Palme d’Or, he picked up Cannes’ Best Director prize for Fitzcarraldo in 1982—but for his stars, sisters Kate and Rooney Mara. The duo appear in the film as twin sisters “in search of an imaginary land where true love is possible,” and who “start digging a tunnel through a mountain range.” (That’s one way to get a boat to the other side, we guess.) Kate Mara also revealed, in a recent conversation about the film with Seth Meyers, that the characters are so close that they speak in unison, which sounds like some very specific combination of fascinating and exhausting.
Bucking Fastard also stars Orlando Bloom and Domnhall Gleeson, and—given that it’s skipping Cannes, which kicks off later this month, and which had previously added the movie onto its public schedule thanks to a presumed belief that Herzog would accept the non-competition slot—has a decent chance of debuting at Venice in September.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.