What to See at the Cannes Film Festival

 

Once the Tribeca Film Festival wraps up, movie fans will turn their attention to the Riviera and the iconic Cannes Film Festival. This year, the festival will open on May 15 with Baz Luhrmann's 3D adaptation of The Great Gatsby and close 11 days later with Jérôme Salle's South Africa-set thriller Zulu.

The Guardian has some great tips on what to catch at the Festival, both in and out of competition.

Roman Polanski returns to the festival with two films: Venus in Fur, adapted from an off-Broadway play, which is in competition, and Weekend of a Champion, a previously unseen documentary about Formula One racer Jackie Stewart, which isn't. 

Joel and Ethan Coen will be represented by Inside Llewyn Davis, set in the folk scene of 1960s New York. Steven Soderbergh's Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra will also vie for the Palme d'Or. The film stars Michael Douglas as the pianist, with Matt Damon as his long-time partner, and will soon premiere on HBO. Alexander Payne returns with Nebraska, a father/son road trip starring Bruce Dern. The other US director in the running is James Gray, whose 1920s set drama The Immigrant stars Joaquin Phoenix and Marion Cotillard. Gray also wrote the screenplay for Blood Ties, a drama starring Cotillard and Mila Kunis, which marks the English-language debut of Guillaume Canet, the director of Tell No One (and the partner of Cotillard).

The only British film at the Festival will be Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight, directed by Stephen Frears, about the boxer's refusal to fight in the Vietnam war and the revenge apparently taken on him by the US government. The movie will screen out of competition. 

And for a mainstream pick, Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling have reunited for Only God Forgives, which sees Gosling as a taciturn gangster in Bangkok and Kristin Scott Thomas as his mother.