The Cannes Film Festival, the world’s most glamorous film festival opens in Cannes on the French Riviera on Wednesday. Here are 10 of the 21 films competing for its top prize, the Palme d’Or:
Ma’Rosa
A small Manila shopkeeper who is caught selling a small amount of drugs is the heroine (excuse the pun) of the prolific Filipino director Brillante Mendoza’s story of a family rallying against corrupt police.
The Last Face
American actor-director Sean Penn is back in dangerous territory, his favorite habitat, with this fiery love story set in war-torn Liberia between the boss of an aid organization played by Charlize Theron and a doctor (Javier Bardem).
Julieta
Spain’s Pedro Almodovar continues his obsession with all things maternal in this full on adaptation of three short stories by the Canadian writer Alice Munro about a mother’s search for her daughter who disappears for a decade.
It’s Only the End of the World (Juste la Fin du Monde)
Twenty seven year old French Canadian wonderkid Xavier Dolan conducts an all-star cast including Marion Cotillard, Vincent Cassel and Lea Seydoux in this drama about a writer who returns home to tell his family he is dying.
The Salesman (Forushande)
The Iranian master Asghar Farhadi, who won an Oscar for A Separation, returns to his theatrical roots in this story of two actors whose relationship turns sour during their performance of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
Toni Erdmann
An old man plays pranks on his adult daughter who he feels lacks a sense of humor in German director Maren Ade’s new film, seven years after she won the Jury Grand Prix at Berlin for Everyone Else.
Loving
Indie favorite Jeff Nichols tells the story of a mixed race couple confronting racism in 1950s Virginia, based on the notorious case of Mildred and Richard Loving who were sentenced to a year in jail for marrying.
Paterson
US director Jim Jarmusch – whose new documentary about his friend Iggy Pop will also be screened at Cannes – is apparently back to his downbeat best with Adam Driver playing a bus driver poet in Paterson, New Jersey.
I, Daniel Blake
Until he hit comedy gold with Looking for Eric, no one could have accused the veteran British director Ken Loach of playing for laughs. But he has cast comedian Dave Johns in his latest gritty drama about welfare cuts hurting vulnerable families.
American Honey
A hard partying band of misfits selling magazines criss-cross the American Midwest in British director Andrea Arnold’s road movie starring Shia LaBeouf.
