Overview
- The film played the closing slot of Cannes’s Un Certain Regard selection on May 22–23, 2026, giving it a high-profile festival debut.
- Laetitia Masson made Ulysse as an auto-fiction based on her own family experience and cast her son Alphonse Roberts as the adolescent Ulysse with Élodie Bouchez and Stanislas Merhar in lead roles.
- On screen the story traces Ulysse’s slow physical and intellectual development and shows repeated medical visits, rehabilitation and bureaucratic obstacles that limit access to specialized institutions.
- Masson says she initially resisted making the movie but completed it after her son found steady work and presents it as a political work that questions society’s ability to accept singularity.
- The Cannes screening and press coverage position Ulysse as both a personal portrait and a public intervention that may steer conversations about disability policy and access in France.