When you see people, whether on the street, in the supermarket, or at a bar, you can’t help but wonder what their story is. No matter how close you are to them, you can never know 100% what is going on behind closed doors. That’s very much the case for Sylvie (Isabelle Huppert), one of the lead characters in Asghar Farhadi’s (A Hero) latest movie Parallel Tales. She’s determined to try to figure out what makes her neighbours across the street tick. As a writer, she has plenty of imagination, wit, and a strong-willed personality, and definitely knows how to spin a web of intrigue, drama, and possibilities.
While that complex web is at the heart of the feature, it seems that for actor Pierre Niney (The Count of Monte Cristo), who plays Christophe or Théo, depending on which reality you’re watching at any given moment, the script wasn’t overly convoluted. During the roundtable at the Cannes Film Festival 2026, he mentioned that “while everybody said the script was really hard to read and very complicated, because everybody was playing two characters”, he actually “liked it straight away because many things were ambiguous and nuanced”.
And who better to truly lead an ambiguous, balanced yet hilariously dark movie than Huppert (A Traveler’s Needs). The more her character delves into the lives of the people around her (from close and far away), the more things unravel. Whether it’s Nita (Virginie Efira) being hunted by a stalker, Christophe having to deal with a family illness or Pierre (Vincent Cassel) getting swept into Sylvie’s lies (or is the truth after all?), the fabulous cast keeps you on your toes the entire time. For writer and director Farhadi, it seems to be his dream cast because while “he didn’t set out thinking to have this five-star casting or have only prestigious names and stars”, as a matter of fact, very quickly he “had more than 90% of the first choices for all the roles, so it was really quick and easy.”
Because numerous actors are taking on different roles in this feature, the casting process was very interesting. Although there were many different characters to cast, it was smooth and quite quick, according to Farhadi himself. Actor Cassel (La haine) echoes that praise for the cast as “to work with Isabelle was very cool because she’s the coolest. She owns the movie”, while “Virginie, of course, and Adam [Bessa] were really attractive names to work with.”
After premiering in competition during the festival in Cannes, the movie got a French release. While there isn’t a worldwide release date yet, who knows what can happen when the crème de la crème of French cinema comes together for a fun, dark and nuanced movie like this?
Freelancer by day. Film journalist by night.
