Guru

There’s a specific kind of silence that happens right before a motivational speaker takes the stage—a vacuum of breath where hundreds of people collectively decide to surrender their agency to a stranger in a well-tailored suit. Yann Gozlan’s Guru (2026) lives entirely within that predatory silence. I remember watching the first teaser and thinking it looked like a standard "rise and fall" biopic, but seeing the final product—which, let’s be honest, almost nobody did because of that disastrous distribution spat between Ninety Films and the streaming giants—it’s actually a surgical dissection of the modern "performance" of self.

The Niney-Gozlan Symbiosis

If you’ve followed French cinema over the last decade, you know that Pierre Niney and Yann Gozlan are essentially the Scorsese and De Niro of high-tension clinical thrillers. This is their third outing together after A Perfect Man and the breathtakingly stressful Boite Noire (2021). Interestingly, Niney’s character here is named Matthieu Vasseur—the exact same name as his character in Boite Noire. Whether it’s a shared universe or just Gozlan’s favorite "everyman" alias, it creates an immediate sense of unease.

Pierre Niney has this incredible ability to look like he’s vibrating at a frequency only dogs and anxious people can hear. As Matt, he doesn’t start as a villain. He starts as a solution. He’s a "coach" who has commodified his own charisma to fill the spiritual void left by the death of traditional institutions. But as the film progresses, the mask doesn't just slip; it melts. Niney’s performance is a masterclass in controlled franticness—the way his eyes dart toward the exits of his own glass-walled office tells you everything you need to know about his internal state. I watched this while wearing an incredibly itchy wool sweater that I was too lazy to change, and honestly, the prickly discomfort of the fabric perfectly matched the skin-crawling tension of Matt’s inevitable public unraveling.

A High-End Terrarium for Suffering

The supporting cast is equally sharp, particularly Marion Barbeau as Adèle. Fresh off her breakout in Cédric Klapisch's En Corps (2022), she brings a dancer’s physicality to a role that requires a lot of silent observation. She’s the anchor that makes Matt’s eventual spiral feel tragic rather than just pathetic. We also get Anthony Bajon (who was so good in Athena) playing Julien, a devotee whose disillusionment provides the film’s most gut-wrenching moments.

Visually, Antoine Sanier’s cinematography makes every location—from sterile TED-style stages to brutalist apartments—look like a high-end terrarium. The lighting is cold, the shadows are sharp, and there’s a recurring motif of reflections that literally screams "this man is fractured" without being too obnoxious about it. It’s the kind of movie where even a glass of water looks like it’s under immense pressure. The score by Chloé Thévenin (aka Chloé) is a pulsating, minimalist nightmare that keeps the tempo high even when the plot slows down to let us breathe.

Why Did We Forget This?

It’s bizarre that Guru isn't a bigger part of the "Greatest of the 2020s" conversation. It hit the festival circuit in early 2026 with a massive amount of buzz, but then it got caught in a "rights hell" scenario. Ninety Films and WY Productions couldn't agree on a theatrical window vs. a global streaming release, leading to a botched rollout where the film was available in French theaters for about ten minutes before being yanked into a digital limbo. It's a shame, because it’s the most biting critique of "influencer culture" I’ve seen that doesn't feel like it was written by someone who still uses a flip phone.

The film tackles our current obsession with "optimization." We don't just want to be happy; we want to be efficiently happy, and we’re willing to pay people like Matt to tell us how to do it. The script, co-written by Gozlan and Jean-Baptiste Delafon (one of the minds behind the brilliant Baron Noir), avoids the easy tropes of a cult leader. Matt isn't trying to start a religion; he’s trying to maintain a brand. It’s a thriller for anyone who has ever felt like their LinkedIn profile is a ransom note.

Guru is a cold, calculated, and ultimately devastating look at what happens when you turn your personality into a product and the market starts to crash. It’s a "missing" gem from 2026 that deserves a proper second life on a platform that won't bury it under a mountain of true-crime documentaries. If you can find it—legal or otherwise—watch it for Niney’s transformation alone. Just maybe wear a comfortable shirt while you do.