PARIS• New films by Sofia Coppola, Todd Haynes, Noah Baumbach, Bong Joon Ho and Michael Haneke will be among the competitors for the Palme d'Or at the 70th Cannes Film Festival next month, the festival announced on Thursday.
The festival, to be held from May 17 to 28, will open with a line-up that includes 49 films from 29 countries, 12 of them by female directors, said festival director Thierry Fremaux at a news conference in Paris.
Coppola's The Beguiled, starring Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Colin Farrell, is a remake of the 1971 American Civil War-era film that starred Clint Eastwood as a soldier who seduces women around him.
Haynes' Wonderstruck, an Amazon Studios production, is based on a 2011 young adult novel by Brian Selznick and tells the stories of two deaf children.
Baumbach's family drama The Meyerowitz Stories, starring Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, is a Netflix original production, as is South Korean director Bong's creature feature Okja, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Tilda Swinton.
Asked about the presence of productions from Netflix and Amazon, which means some films shown at Cannes may hardly be seen in commercial theatres, Mr Fremaux said: "The festival is a laboratory."
Other innovations this year include Carne y Arena, a virtual-reality project by Oscar-winning Mexican director Alejandro G. Inarritu.
Two television shows will also be presented out of competition: the second season of Top Of The Lake by Jane Campion, the only woman so far to win a Palme d'Or, for 1993's The Piano; and some episodes of David Lynch's Twin Peaks revival.
Also in competition for the Palme d'Or are You Were Never Really Here by Scottish director Lynne Ramsay, an Amazon Studios production which stars Joaquin Phoenix as a war veteran who attempts to save a girl from a sex trafficking ring; Good Time by brothers Benny and Josh Safdie, a comedy starring Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Jason Leigh; and The Killing Of A Sacred Deer by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, whose The Lobster showed at Cannes in 2015.
Kidman will supply much of the Hollywood glamour this year.
Besides The Beguiled, she also stars in The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, Top Of The Lake and How To Talk To Girls At Parties, a science- fiction romantic comedy that is not in competition.
Other Cannes regulars are also vying for the Palme d'Or.
Haneke, whose Amour won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2013, will present Happy End, probably an ironic title for a drama about the refugee crisis; Andrey Zvyagintsev, whose Leviathan won Best Screenplay in Cannes in 2014, will present Loveless; and Michel Hazanavicius, whose The Artist won the Best Picture Oscar in 2012, will present Redoubtable.
International critics complained last year that there were too many French films in competition, and there are fewer French entries this time.
The films from the host country include Rodin, by Jacques Doillon; L'Amant Double, by Francois Ozon; and 120 Beats A Minute, by Robin Campillo.
The festival's opening night film, Ismael's Ghosts by French director Arnaud Desplechin, will be shown out of competition.
Other films in competition this year are In The Fade by Germany's Fatih Akin, Radiance by Japan's Naomi Kawase, The Day After by South Korea's Hong Sang Soo, Jupiter's Moon by Hungary's Kornel Mundruczo; and A Gentle Creature by Ukraine's Sergei Loznitsa.
The festival, which will open just days after the French presidential elections, will be the second to be held with the country under a state of emergency after a spate of terrorist attacks.
The festival's president Pierre Lescure said on Thursday that organisers aimed to provide tight security without compromising audience comfort.
NYTIMES, REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
