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 Among the 18 films competing for the top Palme d'Or prize at
the festival will be movies from Russia, Turkey, Canada, Japan
and France, plus several by women directors, festival director
Thierry Fremaux told a news conference.
Among the other films in competition are two from Canada with
director David Cronenberg's "Maps to the Stars" and Atom
Egoyan's "The Captive", plus British directors Ken Loach's
"Jimmy's Hall" and Mike Leigh's "Mr. Turner".
Also to be shown are "Leviathan" by the Russian director Andrey
Zvyagintsev, the Turkish film "Winter Sleep" (Kis uykusu) by
director Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Mauritanian director Abderrahmane
Sissako's "Timbuktu."
Japanese director Naomi Kawase's "Futatsume no mado" (Two
Windows) will compete, as will several French entries including
director Bertrand Bonello's bio-pic "Saint Laurent" about the
fashion guru and "Sils Maris" directed by Olivier Assayas and
starring Juliette Binoche.
Another Hollywood offering will be the out-of-competition world
premiere of the 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks Animation
co-production "How to Train Your Dragon 2", the sequel of the
adaptation of the successful book series about a boy growing up
with a dragon as his life partner.
The festival, which runs from May 14-25, will open with an
out-of-competition screening of "Grace of Monaco", a bio-pic
starring Nicole Kidman and directed by French director Olivier
Dahan.
The parallel, more art house-focused "Un Certain Regard"
schedule kicks off with "Party Girl" by French director Marie
Amachoukeli, starring Claire Burger and Samuel Theis.
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Oscar-winning New Zealand director Jane Campion will lead the jury
for the main competition. She is the first and only woman to have
won the top Cannes prize, the Palme d'Or, in 1993 for "The Piano".
A total of 49 long-form films were chosen to be shown at the
festival out of 1,800 submitted. The selected movies are from 28
countries and 15 of the directors are women.
The festival is one of the world's oldest and swankiest, with stars
and movie moguls often showing up at the Mediterranean port city on
enormous yachts.
But there will be time and space for serious world affairs, with
documentaries about the Syrian conflict and the political upheaval
in Ukraine, Fremaux said.
The official poster this year for the festival, which always pays
homage to the film greats of the past, is a sepia-toned portrait of
the Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni, who starred in Federico
Fellini's classic "8½".
(Writing by Michael Roddy; editing by Andrew Roche)
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