SIXTEEN FILMS from 13 countries will be in contention for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year, while new works by Ridley Scott, Woody Allen and Oliver Stone will have their premieres at the showpiece event.
Director Tim Burton will chair a main jury that includes Puerto Rican actor Benicio Del Toro, Indian director Shekhar Kapur and French writer Emmanuel Carrère. The curtain-raiser for the 63rd festival, which begins on May 12th, will be Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett.
British director Mike Leigh's new film, Another Year, is in the running for the top prize. Leigh (67) won the Palme d'Or in 1996 for Secrets and Liesand was last nominated in 2002 for All or Nothing. He faces competition from 15 other directors, including Mexican Alejandro González Iñárritu, Japan's Takeshi Kitano and France's Bertrand Tavernier.
The only American picture shortlisted for the Palme d'Or is Fair Game, director Doug Liman's account of the Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame CIA spy scandal, which features Sean Penn and Naomi Watts.
Woody Allen's new offering, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, which stars Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins and Freida Pinto, will be shown out of competition. So too will Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which will close the festival.
Announcing the selection at a press conference in a Paris hotel yesterday, festival director Thierry Frémaux said organisers were watching films up until this week as they tried to settle on the programme. One surprise was the omission of Terrence Malick's family drama Tree of Life, but Frémaux said the film wasn't yet finished, adding, "we're crossing our fingers".
This year's festival on the Croisette has a hard act to follow. The winners of the top two prizes in 2009, Michael Haneke's The White Ribbonand Jacques Audiard's A Prophet, were two of the most critically acclaimed movies of the year, while Pixar's Up, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterdsand Lars Von Trier's Antichristwere also screened at Cannes.
Meanwhile, coverage of next month’s festival could be curtailed if a dispute between its sponsors and the world’s biggest news agencies is not resolved by May 12th.
Reuters, Agence France Presse, Getty Images and Associated Press boycotted yesterday’s press briefing because of what they believe are “unfair restrictions” being placed on coverage of the festival.