Camerimage 2026 – The Cameras and Lenses Behind the 15 Golden Frog Contenders

Camerimage 2026Awards

by Nino LeitnerToday

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Fifteen films compete for the Golden Frog at this year’s ToruńCAMERIMAGE, and we looked up which cameras, lenses, and formats their cinematographers chose. ARRI digital cameras lead on eight of the eleven productions with published camera data, two films were shot mostly on 35mm, and three of the fifteen are in black and white.

The 34th edition of the festival runs in Toruń, Poland, until November 14, when a jury led by film editor Joe Walker names the winner from the official main competition lineup. The festival has already honored Thomas Riedel this year, as we reported. For this overview we used manufacturer credit pages, Kodak and lab case studies, American Cinematographer, and interviews with the cinematographers and their crews. For four films we found no camera information that we could confirm, so we name them below and leave them out of the count.

Two films on the ALEXA 65

Greig Fraser shot Project Hail Mary on the ARRI ALEXA 65 with a custom anamorphic lens set from ARRI Rental. According to ARRI Rental, the lenses sit on the camera rotated by 90°, so the anamorphic squeeze adds image height for the 1.43:1 IMAX frame and the flares run vertically. For the Earth flashbacks, the crew rephotographed footage from a 4K monitor with an ARRI 435 film camera whose shutter was deliberately out of phase, which produced the streaks that Greig could not get convincingly in post, as he told American Cinematographer. The same article says the graded picture went out to film and back through a scanner at FotoKem with colorist Dave Cole.

In an interview with Definition, Greig said the production used no green or blue screens. Space was a black surround, and the sunlight in the centrifuge came from three concentric half circles of Creamsource Vortex fixtures. Project Hail Mary is the second IMAX-format production in our recent coverage after Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which used IMAX film cameras throughout.

Damián García also chose the ALEXA 65 for Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth!, paired with Panavision Sphero lenses, according to his answers in IndieWire’s fall festival camera survey.

The ALEXA 35 is the most common camera in the competition

Four of the fifteen films used the ARRI ALEXA 35 as the main camera. Łukasz Żal shot Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland on it, according to ARRI’s summary of the Cannes selection. The film is in black and white, and the director has said that most scenes were lit with a single source. The lenses are not public.

Oskar Dahlsbakken combined the ALEXA 35 with ARRI Signature Primes on Growth of the Soil, per the same IndieWire survey. The film already won him the jury prize for best cinematography in San Sebastián, as the Norwegian Film Institute reported. Wojciech Staroń used the ALEXA 35 and a Sony a7S III with Lomo Super Speed lenses on the black-and-white Ulya, according to IndieWire’s Cannes survey.

Ben Davis shot Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine on the ALEXA 35 and added 16mm and Super 8 sequences. Cinelab says it processed and scanned those sequences, and that the finished picture went through a digital-to-film-to-digital transfer on 35mm KODAK 50D stock. Ben told TheWrap that film capture was not practical on Rapa Nui, so he shot digitally and matched the look of 1970s Ektachrome, with special attention to how that stock shows red.

Large format with old glass on the Mini LF

Lol Crawley shot Wicker on the ARRI ALEXA Mini LF with ARRI Signature Primes. For the scenes in the fisherwoman’s hut he changed to Canon K35 lenses because of their focus fall-off, according to American Cinematographer. He also clipped impression filters to the rear of the lenses, which gave the out-of-focus areas a swirl. Colorist Máté Ternyik added film-emulation grain in the grade.

Jasper J. Spanning used the same camera body on Woman Unknown. IndieWire’s Venice survey lists vintage Olympus Zuiko lenses and Petzval lenses rehoused by TLS.

Minotaur is the only confirmed Sony production

Mikhail Krichman shot Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur on the Sony VENICE 2 in 8K X-OCN XT with Cooke anamorphic lenses. The production also tested the ALEXA 35 and selected the VENICE 2 for its flexibility in dark scenes, as DIT Veronica Tiron explains in an interview with the French DIT association ADIT.

That interview is the most detailed workflow account for any film in the competition. The show LUT was rebuilt in FilmLight’s T-Log and E-Gamut 2 color space with a film-emulation target, because Mikhail wanted the editorial images to be close to the final look. The shoot in Latvia produced about 262TB of camera files, which went to MPC in Paris each night. The LED wall scenes were calibrated with Assimilate Live FX and OpenVPCal.

Two 35mm productions with different methods

Janusz Kamiński shot about two thirds of Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day on 35mm film and the remainder digitally, in 2.39:1, according to Kodak. Panavision’s credit page lists the Panaflex Millennium XL2 with C Series and T Series anamorphic lenses and Primo Close Focus lenses, plus the ALEXA 35 and the Sony VENICE 2 for the digital part. Kodak adds that the Roswell archive sequence is black-and-white 16mm. The glow of the landing craft came from a high-output lamp that two drones carried in tandem, Janusz said in an interview with the Motion Picture Association. He also receives the festival’s Visionary in Cinematography award this year.

Gris Jordana shot La Bola Negra on 3-perf 35mm with ARRICAM cameras and Panavision Primo lenses, in 1.78:1. She told Kodak that she overexposed the complete film by two thirds of a stop, used standard processing, and gave all three time periods the same photochemical treatment. The periods differ through focal length. The 1932 scenes use wide lenses close to the actors, the 1937 scenes use 35mm and 40mm lenses, and the 2017 scenes use telephoto lenses.

Three black-and-white films and four open entries

Fatherland and Ulya are not the only monochrome films in the selection. Jolanta Dylewska shot Through the Wall in black and white, a decision that producer WFDiF connects to the documentary authenticity of the story. The film won her the cinematography award in Gdynia, but its camera and lenses are not public.

The same applies to three more titles. We found no confirmed camera data for Visitation (Axel Schneppat), Zero A.D. (Gorka Gómez Andreu), and The Mosquito Bowl (Jacques Jouffret). We will add them when the productions or their suppliers publish the information.

Lens choice varies more than camera choice

Among the eleven films with known cameras, eight used an ARRI digital camera as the main camera, one used a Sony, and two used 35mm film cameras. No film on the list names a RED, Blackmagic Design, or Canon cinema camera as its main camera.

The lenses show much less agreement. Panavision glass is on three films, and ARRI Signature Primes are on two. Four cinematographers went to old or modified optics, among them Lomo Super Speeds, Canon K35s, rehoused Petzvals, and a custom anamorphic set that only fits the picture when it is turned on its side. Two of the digital productions, Project Hail Mary and Wild Horse Nine, also sent their finished pictures through a film stage before delivery.

Which of these films is your favorite for the Golden Frog, and which camera and lens combination interests you most? Don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments below!