PARIS • Quentin Tarantino's much-anticipated new film, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, will premiere at the Cannes film festival after doubts over whether it would be finished in time.
The movie, which stars Brad Pitt as a 1970s Hollywood stuntman alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie, will compete against new films by veteran directors Ken Loach and Terrence Malick for the top Palme d'Or prize at the festival, which starts on May 14.
"We were afraid the film would not be ready," festival director Thierry Fremaux said, adding that Tarantino had finished it after spending four straight months in the editing room.
"He'll definitely be there - 25 years after the Palme d'Or for Pulp Fiction (1994) - with a finished film screened in 35mm and his cast in tow," Fremaux said.
DiCaprio, whose girlfriend, actress Camila Morrone, will be making her Cannes debut in American indie movie Mickey And The Bear, will also premiere his new environmental documentary, Ice On Fire, there.
As with his 2007 warning shot on the state of the planet, The 11th Hour, which he also produced, it is directed by Leila Conners and will be shown at a special screening.
Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal will add a further burst of stardust to the line-up, premiering his second film as a director at the festival.
Bernal shot to worldwide fame almost overnight when Amores Perros was shown at the festival in 2000.
Its director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who has since gone on to win four Oscars, including for Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015), heads the jury at Cannes this year.
Bernal's coming-of-age story Chicuarotes is billed as a "deep dive into Mexican society".
But it is the return of Tarantino to La Croisette, with his starry gang of megastar pals led by DiCaprio and Pitt, which is likely to make most headlines when the festival - which calls itself "the Olympics of film" - starts in a week.
Fremaux said Tarantino's new movie - which will be released in July - "is a love letter to the Hollywood of his childhood, a rock music tour of 1969 and an ode to cinema".
Last month, Fremaux hinted that he would hold the door open for the maker of Reservoir Dogs (1992) until the very last minute.
Loach, who won the Palme d'Or prize in 2016 with I, Daniel Blake, returns with Sorry We Missed You, an indictment of the gig economy, while Malick will premiere his World War II story, A Hidden Life, about a German conscientious objector guillotined by the Nazis in 1943.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
