The arrival of Coward in festival competition has shifted attention back to Belgian director Lukas Dhont, who built his reputation on small, emotionally exact films. After the acclaim of Girl and Close—works that won prizes like the Queer Palm, the Caméra d’Or and the Grand Prix, and even secured an Oscar nomination—Dhont has turned his gaze to the trenches of World War I. The new project keeps Dhont’s interest in the interior life of characters while expanding the canvas: a battlefield setting where tenderness unexpectedly blooms amid rigid expectations of masculinity.
At the center of the story is Pierre, played by Emmanuel Macchia, a soldier who arrives at the front determined to prove himself but who finds the realities of war brutal and bewildering. His quiet counterpart, Francis, portrayed by Valentin Campagne, raises spirits by staging impromptu performances for their comrades. Those theatrical moments, where men swap roles and sometimes wear female attire, become the only socially permissible places where affection can be shown. Dhont describes this contradiction as a space where violence and liberation coexist, and the film follows that tension closely as it unfolds on screen.
From archives to image: the inspiration behind the film
Dhont’s starting point was a striking black-and-white image of a cross-dressing soldier found in an archive; that photograph sent him into museums and collections looking for corroborating evidence. Much of the historical record, he discovered, prioritized narratives of bravery and combat, while softer expressions of emotion at the front were seldom celebrated. By digging into letters, diaries and period photographs, Dhont uncovered testimonies about men performing female roles and offering each other intimacy in non-sexual, profoundly human ways. This research informed the film’s central premise: that performance could offer a public guise for private feeling, and that wartime routines sometimes created unexpected opportunities for queer expression.
Performance as a means of connection
The film stages several sequences of communal entertainment where soldiers sing period songs and put on makeshift plays. Dhont and his team sought authenticity: much of the repertoire performed in the movie is pulled from wartime materials, and a few original compositions were fashioned to sit comfortably alongside those older tunes. The narrative explores how these acts of play allow Pierre and Francis to communicate in front of others, turning costumes and roles into a language of love. In Dhont’s hands, the performance scenes are not comic relief but mechanisms for emotional survival, placing the camera inside private glances and shared rituals.
Masculinity and its contradictions
One of the film’s repeated questions is what it means to be labeled a coward. Historically, men who avoided combat or fled could be executed or erased, and the stigma around non-conformity was severe. Dhont uses the title to interrogate the morality that elevates sacrifice over self-preservation and to ask how society treats those who choose a different path. By portraying soldiers who both perform martial duties and enact tender domestic roles for each other, the film destabilizes fixed ideas of heroism and shows how acts seen as ‘soft’ can be radical in their own right.
Production choices, cast and circulation
Rather than relying on marquee names, Dhont cast a largely unknown ensemble, a choice intended to increase verisimilitude and keep the viewer focused on experience rather than celebrity. The production filmed on authentic locations in the West Flemish fields, the actual landscapes marked by wartime cemeteries and history, and employed a soundscape and cinematography designed to create an intimate perspective—what Dhont calls an immersive companionship with one protagonist. This commitment to period authenticity extends to costume, music and the staging of trenches, creating a world that feels lived-in rather than theatrical.
Distribution and festival plans
On the business side, arthouse distributor Mubi secured rights for numerous territories, including the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand, signaling a wide international appetite for the film. Coward is set to make its world premiere on May 21 at the Cannes Film Festival, where viewers and critics will be able to assess how successfully Dhont marries intimate storytelling to the scale of a war picture. Early reactions will likely spark discussion about genre expectations and the filmmaker’s continued interest in probing the emotional lives of young men.
Ultimately, Coward aims to complicate familiar images of wartime heroism by spotlighting moments of tenderness, ritual and theatricality that have been largely absent from mainstream portrayals. Dhont’s blend of archival curiosity, textured production design and an emphasis on interior viewpoint promises a film that is as much about emotional truth as it is about historical setting—an offering that asks audiences to reconsider what bravery, performance and love can look like in the most unlikely of places.