Oldenburg Film Festival Unveils First Selections for 2026: World Premieres, Cannes Alumni and a Dark Star Tribute
The Oldenburg Film Festival has announced the first wave of selections for its 33rd edition, bringing world premieres, Cannes alumni and a tongue-in-cheek tribute to John Carpenter's debut feature to the northern German city. Festival director and co-founder Torsten Neumann unveiled the initial titles on Monday, alongside a trailer titled 2026: An Oldenburg Odyssey — a knowing nod to Carpenter's 1974 student film Dark Star The Hollywood Reporter.
Among the headline premieres is Michael Polish's Kill Me Now, a world premiere starring Jacqueline Singer — who also wrote the screenplay — as a novelist racing a deadline who starts to believe her life is mirroring the thriller she is writing. Mena Suvari, Mario Van Peebles and Keith Carradine round out the cast. Bertrand Mandico's Roma Elastica, a France-Italy co-production starring Marion Cotillard and Noémie Merlant that screened at midnight at Cannes this year, will have its German premiere at Oldenburg.
Edgar Pêra's Asphalt Guerilla arrives from Locarno. The film is an experimental docu-drama that blends fiction with historical fact, tracing a bank robbery carried out by an amateur guerrilla cell in 1970s Portugal and the director's own failed attempt in the 1990s to adapt their story for the screen. Also crossing over from Locarno is Vincent Grashaw's Bruton, which will have its German premiere. Based on the true story of Jacksonville small-time criminal Bryan Bruton and starring Theo Rossi, it marks Grashaw's third appearance at Oldenburg, following Bang Bang and last year's Keep Quiet, which won the festival's Spirit of Cinema Award.
The first wave also features several debut directors. Matthew Osubor's Big Daddy's Flowers, an Oldenburg world premiere, was made under the mentorship of Alexandre Rockwell and shot in Providence, Rhode Island. Boris Mojsovski's Foreign Tongue, a Canadian feature about the immigrant experience starring Kimberly Sue Murray, will also receive its world premiere, as will Srdjan Janicijevic's You Won't Believe What Happened Before, a political thriller set in North Macedonia.
Rounding out the announced titles are Mylissa Fitzsimmons' Mackenzie, about an eleven-year-old girl in the Utah desert who dreams of running away to California to meet 1980s teen idol Mackenzie Astin; Marjorie Conrad's film essay The Joyless Economy, which premiered in Cannes' Directors' Fortnight (a parallel section that runs alongside the main competition); and Superbuhei, a dark comedy from German director Josef Brandl featuring a cameo from Scorpions frontman Klaus Meine.
What makes this first-wave announcement stand out is the range of paths these films have taken to reach Oldenburg — from the midnight corridors of Cannes to a student-film homage to a festival trailer. The full lineup will expand as the 33rd edition approaches.
