Sofia Coppola, Michael Haneke, Noah Baumbach and Todd Haynes are among the directors who will be bringing films to the 70th Cannes Film Festival, festival president Pierre Lescure and general delegate Thierry Frémaux announced on Thursday at a press conference in Paris.
Coppola will be in the main competition with “The Beguiled,” a new version of the novel that inspired a 1971 Clint Eastwood film. Her version stars Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning and Colin Farrell.
Haynes will return to Cannes two years after debuting “Carol” there with “Wonderstruck,” starring Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams. Baumbach will come to the festival with “The Meyerowitz Stories,” starring Dustin Hoffman and Adam Sandler.
Haneke, who won the Palme d’Or with his last two films, “The White Ribbon” and “Amour,” will attempt to become the first three-time winner with “Happy End,” starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert, who will also appear in “Claire’s Camera,” a Hong Sangsoo film that will receive a special screening.
Other directors in a main competition long on well-known international auteurs will include Fatih Akin (“In the Fade”), Sergei Loznitsa (“A Gentle Creature”), Naomi Kawase (“Radiance”), Francois Ozon (“L’Amant Double”), Bong Joon-Ho (“Okja”) and Andrey Zvyagintsev (“Loveless”).
The 18-film competition section will also include “The Artist” director Michel Hazanavicius’ “Le Reboutable,” about the romance between director Jean-Luc Godard and a young actress; “We Need to Talk About Kevin” director Lynne Ramsay’s “You Were Never Really Here”; and “Dogtooth” director Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” an English-language film that also features “Beguiled” co-stars Kidman and Farrell.
Out-of-competition titles include John Cameron Mitchell’s “How to Talk to Girls at Parties,” Kidman’s third Cannes title, as well as French director Arnaud Desplechin’s “Les Fantomes D’Ismael,” which will open the festival.
Special screenings include the climate-change documentary “An Inconvenient Sequel,” Claude Lanzmann’s “Napalm,” Eugene Jarecki’s “Promised Land” and the Vanessa Redgrave-directed refugee documentary “Sea Sorrow.” A series that Fremaux called “special events” will include two episodes of David Lynch’s upcoming Showtime TV series “Twin Peaks,” as well as episodes of Jane Campion’s “Top of the Lake” and the last film from the late Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, “24 Frames.”
The Un Certain Regard section will open with French actor-director Mathieu Amalric’s “Barbara,” and will also include “Hell or High Water” writer Taylor Sheridan’s “Wind River,” which premiered at Sundance.
Twelve of the announced films were directed by women, up from nine last year. Three of those are in the main competition, the same number as 2016. Nine of the films are first features, an increase of two, though as usual none of them are in the main competition.
For the first time, Cannes will also present a virtual-reality installation, “Carne y Arena,” directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu and shot by three-time Oscar winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki.
The 49 announced selections, which will be supplemented by additional films to be announced in the next few weeks, were winnowed down from what Frémaux said were 1,930 features submitted to the festival.
In introducing the selections, Lescue mentioned the upcoming French election and the presence of U.S. President Donald Trump on the international scene. “It will be a political time,” he said. “I hope that North Korea and Syria will not cast a shadow on the 70th edition [of Cannes].”
A slot in the main competition guarantees a film a significant amount of international attention, and most receive some kind of U.S. release on the art-house circuit. Of the films in competition last year, for example, the most high-profile were “Elle,” “Loving,” “The Salesman” and “Toni Erdmann,” all of which received Oscar nominations (with “The Salesman” winning), and “American Honey,” “The Handmaiden,” “It’s Only the End of the World,” “Julieta” and “Personal Shopper,” which received attention on their U.S. releases.
“Captain Fantastic,” “Hell or High Water” and “The Red Turtle” were in the Un Certain Regard sidebar, while out-of-competition titles included Steven Spielberg’s “The BFG” and Woody Allen’s “Café Society.”
The 70th Cannes Film Festival will kick off on May 17 and run through May 28.
The lineup:
MAIN COMPETITION:
“Aus Dem Nichts” (“In the Fade”), Fatih Akin
“The Beguiled,” Sofia Coppola
“A Gentle Creature,” Sergei Loznitsa
“Geu-Hu” (“The Day After”), Hong Sangsoo
“Good Time,” Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie
“Happy End,” Michael Haneke
“Hikari” (“Radiance”), Naomi Kawase
“Jupiter’s Moon,” Kornel Mundruzco
“The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” Yorgos Lanthimos
“L’Amant Double,” Francois Ozon
“Le Reboutable,” Michel Hazanivicius
“The Meyerowitz Stories,” Noah Baumbach
“Nelyubov” (“Loveless”), Andrey Zvyagintsev
“Okja,” Bong Joon-Ho
“120 Battements Par Minute” (“120 Heartbeats per Minute”), Robin Campillo
“Rodin,” Jacques Doillon
“Wonderstruck,” Todd Haynes
“You Were Never Really Here,” Lynne Ramsay
OUT OF COMPETITION:
“How to Talk to Girls at Parties,” John Cameron Mitchell
“Les Fantomes D’Ismael,” Arnaud Desplechin
“Mugen non Junin” (“Blade of the Immortal”), Takashi Miike
“Visages, Villages,” Agnes Varda & JR
SPECIAL SCREENINGS:
“Claire’s Camera” (“Keul-le-eo-ui Ka-me-la”), Hong Sangsoo
“Demons in Paradise,” Jude Ratman
“An Inconvenient Sequel,” Bonni Cohen & Jon Shenk
“Napalm,” Claude Lanzmann
“Promised Land,” Eugene Jarecki
“Sea Sorrow,” Vanessa Redgrave
“They,” Anahita Ghazvinizadeh
“12 Days,” Raymond Depardon
MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS:
“Ak-Nyeo” (“The Villainess”), Jung Byug-Gil
“Bulhangang” (“The Merciless”), Byun Sung-Hyun
“Prayer Before Dawn,” Jean-Stephane Sauvaire
SPECIAL EVENTS:
“24 Frames,” Abbas Kiarostami
“Top of the Lake,” Jane Campion & Ariel Kleiman
“Come Swim,” Kristen Stewart
“Twin Peaks,” David Lynch (two episodes)
UN CERTAIN REGARD:
“Aala Kaf Ifrit” (“Beauty and the Dogs”), Kaouther Ven Hania
“Apres Le Guerre” (“After the War”), Annarita Zambrano
“Barbara,” Mathieu Amalric (opening night film)
“En Attendant Les Hirondelles” (“The Nature of Time”), Karim Moussaoui
“Fortunata” (“Lucky”), Sergio Castellitto
“Jeune Femme,” Leonor Serraille
“L’Atelier,” Laurent Cantet
“La Novia del Desierto” (“The Desert Bride”), Cecilia Atan & Valeria Pivato
“Las Hijas de Abril” (“April’s Daughter”), Michel Franco
“Lerd” (“Dregs”), Mohammed Rasoufol
“Out,” Gyorgy Kristof
“Posoki” (“Directions”), Stephan Komandarev
“Sanpo Suru Shrinryakusha” (“Before We Vanish”), Kiyoshi Kurosawa
“Tesnota” (“Closeness”), Kantemir Balagov
“Western,” Valeska Grisebach
“Wind River,” Taylor Sheridan
SPECIAL VR INSTALLATION:
“Carne y Arena,” Alejandro G. Inarritu