Shana Film Review: Magic Rings & Bad Decisions

Shana is a tense and mystical look at the life of a young drug dealer as she deals with money troubles and a toxic boyfriend.

Shana is a spiky, brassy young woman; a modern Cabiria Ceccarelli wandering the streets of Paris in search of an identity and a purpose. With an anxious intensity similar to that of a horror movie, a keen eye for place, and a keen ear for the way that people talk, Pinell completely submerges the viewer in Shana’s world. 

An adaptation of the 2021 short Le Roi David, the movie premiered at the Director’s Fortnight of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. Shana has a shaggy, spontaneous pace that would give it a hang-out vibe if its protagonist was a little more pleasant to be around. But Shana is something more important than pleasant; she’s compelling. The twenty-five year old is introduced drunkenly fighting with friends over a perceived slight during a Mafia-type game concerning werewolves attacking a village. The running werewolf motif throughout Shana is something that I haven’t quite figured out yet, but that I found absolutely intriguing. 

From this abrasive beginning, the viewer is thrown alongside Shana and watches as she deals drugs, worries about toxic relationships, parties, chills with friends, and fights with her judgemental family over lip injections and plans for her half-sister’s bat mitzvah. In the midst of this metaphorical hurricane, Shana’s Grandmother passes away, leaving behind a beautiful bejeweled ring that is said to ward away evil. That’s certainly something that Shana needs when her abusive, much-older boyfriend is released from prison and demands back money that she had stolen and spent. 

Shana is a comedy, with a wicked and sly sense of humor, but it’s played more in the key of a horror movie.The film uses Béla Bartók’s “Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celestia” as a leitmotif so frequently it becomes repetitive and a little tedious. Before it reaches that point it creates a palpable sense of unease and mysticism, imbuing even the most banal moment with danger. The music piece was used in The Shining, and like Jack Torrance unable to leave the halls of the Overlook Hotel, Shana is trapped in a world of scams and violence. For a large portion of the movie, I kept waiting for it to make a leap into horror. Perhaps, that how Shana feels, always on the precipice of danger, as she begs friends for money, or confronts her mother about leaving her in foster care as a child, or navigates an abusive boyfriend.

Paris is shown to great advantage throughout Shana, with Pinell and cinematographer Victor Zébo capturing its grimy glory and utilizing locations that aren’t frequently shown in movies. The movie is a character study, but it doesn’t reduce the world to a blur behind Shana. Rather, episodes in the movie illustrate the way Shana barrels through the world and the way that the world barrels back at her. The script is fresh and smart, with a good ear for the way that young people talk in 2026. 

Shana is an abrasive and prickly person to spend time around, but in the most human way possible. Throughout the movie the layers are peeled back and by the end the viewer understands the pain and desperation that she is protecting. Pinell never sentimentalizes the flaws, but rather allows the viewer the space to make their own judgements and remember their own mistakes. Shana is an involving, funny, well-observed movie that will prove rewarding for those willing to go along for the ride. 

Shana premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, in the Quinzaine des Cinéastes, on May 16, 2026. The film will be released in French cinemas on June 17.