Paper Tiger

James Gray has spent three decades on family, loyalty and immigrant ambition in the films that made his name: The Yards, We Own the Night, Two Lovers, The Immigrant and Armageddon Time. He wrote and directed Paper Tiger, a co-production between the US, Brazil and Italy that premiered in the main competition of the 79th Cannes Film Festival in 2026 and was acquired by Neon. It takes him back to the kind of fraternal crime story he has long made his own.

Two brothers chasing the American Dream get caught up in a scheme that looks too good to be true, and it draws them towards corruption, violence and the orbit of the Russian "Mafiya." Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller head a starry cast, and Gray surrounds them with his customary burnished, classical craft: a New York of debts, family obligation and slowly tightening dread.

Reviews at Cannes were admiring but divided, and the film holds an 83% score on Rotten Tomatoes; Variety praised its atmosphere while questioning its plausibility. For Gray it is a return to the criminal-family territory of his earliest work, mounted on a larger canvas and with a marquee cast. Few American directors still make crime dramas this classical in shape, and it was fitting to see one premiere on the world stage of the Croisette.