Cannes Film Festival unveils 2013 lineup

Hollywood heavyweights like the Coen Brothers and Steven Soderbergh will mingle with filmmakers from all over the world at next month’s 66th Cannes Film Festival after organizers on Thursday unveiled a line-up filled with international films.

The world’s most important cinema showcase, the 10-day Cannes festival on the glamorous, palm-filled French Riviera, welcomes a global crowd of authors, actors and others, while red carpet-ready American stars keep the cameras flashing.

Hundreds of film critics and journalists filled the plush blue seats inside a Champs-Elysees cinema on Thursday underneath a huge video screen of the 2013 Cannes poster — Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward curled up kissing — to learn which films had made the cut this year.

China, Japan, Ireland and even Chad will be among those   countries represented in the 19-strong line-up for the main  competition, where the ultimate prize is the coveted Palme D’Or prize awarded on the final evening.

Click here for a full list of films.

Festival artistic director Thierry Fremaux said 1,858 films were submitted — some as late as Wednesday evening — and the line-up would be “full of discovery, surprises and stars” at the May 15-26 event.

Fremaux said the Cannes red carpet would be rolled out for Cannes regulars and newcomers alike so as to have the best selection possible.

“We want to see the people we like so when we have Steven Soderbergh, James Gray and the Coen brothers for instance, or even Alexander Payne, when we’ve been following them for years, we’re curious to see them again,” he said.

“Big football teams do not deprive themselves of their great players for the big matches. Cannes is a big match and we want to have the best selection possible,” he added.

Among such top names is U.S. filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, winner of the 1989 Palme D’Or for the popular Sex, Lies, and Videotape, whose HBO film Behind the Candelabra stars Michael Douglas as flamboyant pianist and singer Liberace and Matt Damon as his lover.

Also adding Hollywood firepower are brothers Ethan and Joel Coen, best known for Fargo, with Inside Llewyn Davis, a look at the New York folk music scene starring Justin Timberlake and John Goodman.

Two more American films are in the main competition, The Immigrant from director James Gray and Alexander Payne’s Nebraska. The main line-up includes no British films.

As previously announced, the festival will open on May 15 with a screening of Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby starring Leonardo DiCaprio, who will return to Cannes for the first time since 2007. Opening and closing ceremonies will be hosted by French actress Audrey Tautou, known for the French film Amelie.

DiCaprio plays tragic hero Jay Gatsby in the 3D movie of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary classic with Carey Mulligan playing Daisy Buchanan and Tobey Maguire as the narrator, Nick Carraway.

Films in the main competition include Roman Polanski’s French-language adaptation of the play Venus in Fur in which he cast his wife Emmanuelle Seigner.

The closing film on May 26 will be the thriller Zulu, shot on location in South Africa by Jerome Salle and starring Orlando Bloom and Forest Whitaker.

“What I like in this selection is that there are many countries and as the festival is international there have to be as many countries as possible and second there are people I like a lot,” said festival president Gilles Jacob.

“Cannes, land of welcome,” is how Jacob described the festival, citing efforts over the years to provide a platform and refuge for filmmakers around the world who are harassed or censored by their governments.

Chad, the only African pick, is in the main competition for the first time with Grigris from director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, who won the festival’s jury prize in 2010. Iran director Asghar Farhadi, who became the first Iranian to win an Academy Award for the best foreign language film for A Separation last year, joins the Cannes line-up with Le Passe, starring French actress The Artist’s Berenice Bejo. Another Iranian director will participate to the Un Certain Regard competition, Mohammad Rasoulof.

Rasoulof already presented a film in Cannes in 2011, Good Bye, without being able to make himself the trip to the French Riviera. Fremaux said he hoped he would manage to come this year and that his movie had not been selected for the tough working conditions of the director but for the quality of the movie.

One of the world’s most respected, and controversial, directors, Roman Polanski returns to Cannes this season after winning the Palme D’Or in 2002 for his Second World War Warsaw ghetto film The Pianist.

His French-language adaptation of the play Venus in Fur in which he cast his wife Emmanuelle Seigner is an erotic comedy that revolves around an actress’s sadomasochistic audition for a role in a play.

This year’s jury deciding the awards in the main competition will be led by two-time Academy Award winning Director Steven Spielberg. Presiding over the jury deciding the smaller Un Certain Regard prize will be Danish director Thomas Vinterberg whose film The Hunt was highly regarded by critics at Cannes last year.

The screening of The Bling Ring by U.S. director Sofia Coppola and starring Emma Watson will open this competition on May 16.

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