MUBI has revealed a new set of stills from Lukas Dhont’s latest feature, Coward, his third film after Girl and the Academy Award-nominated Close. Set during the First World War, the film follows Pierre, a young soldier who arrives at the front determined to prove himself. Behind the lines, he meets Francis, who organizes a theatre show for the soldiers.
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As violence continues nearby, the two men search for moments that offer distance from the brutality surrounding them. Coward premiered at the 79th Cannes International Film Festival in 2026, where lead actors Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne received the Best Actor prize.
Dhont developed the film from a 1914 photograph of a Belgian soldier dressed as a woman behind the front lines. The image led him toward archival research on soldiers who staged theatrical revues during wartime, often creating costumes from materials they could find.
That research also uncovered personal accounts and photographs that showed soldiers creating spaces where they could explore identity outside military expectations. Dhont later found testimony about queer relationships between soldiers during the First World War, including romances that ended after the conflict.
Pierre and Francis grew from that material. Pierre has barely experienced adult life when he enters the army, while Francis introduces another way of imagining life behind the front. Dhont describes their relationship as the first major love of their lives, shaped by a context that constantly threatens its future.
Dhont keeps much of the combat outside the frame. He places the camera in the camp behind the trenches, where soldiers sleep, perform, care for one another and confront the physical consequences of war. Sound carries much of the violence that remains unseen.
The director works with cinematographer Frank van den Eeden on a visual palette that introduces warmer shades of blue, red and yellow alongside the khaki, brown and green associated with First World War imagery.
Costume becomes another way for the soldiers to recover individuality. Military uniforms erase personal difference, while theatrical clothing allows them to create new identities. Dhont also treats physical movement with choreographic attention, using bodies to express exhaustion, violence, tenderness and desire.
Macchia plays Pierre in his first film role after Dhont discovered him during an open casting. Campagne plays Francis. Dhont initially found their dynamic uncertain, though their third meeting established the connection he wanted for the film. Dhont co-wrote the screenplay with Angelo Tijssens, continuing his focus on young characters confronting identity, intimacy and the expectations surrounding them.
