The Cannes Film Festival returns today in what is the first fully fledged film festival since the advent of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020.
Last year's edition was cancelled over the health crisis and many of the glitzy after-parties that are the festival's calling card have been postponed because of distancing measures.
But stars will be allowed to go mask-less on the red carpet this year provided they have a health pass.
The carpet itself will be half the volume - and made from recycled materials - as part of the festival's bid to be 'green'. Each festival-goer is also expected to contribute €20 to go towards offsetting their carbon footprint.
Rolling out the red carpet... even if it is only half the size as previous years'
The Cannes Film Festival was cancelled last year due to coronavirus but makes its return this week in what is the first fully fledged film festival since the outbreak of Covid-19 (pictured: Cannes' Palais des Festivals, the location of the film festival)
Event organisers rolled out the red carpet yesterday for the arrival of the festival's stars. The festival kicks off later today, July 6 after the traditional press conference set to take place this afternoon
Head of the festival jury Spike Lee (centre right) poses alongside jury members Maggie Gyllenhaal (left), Jessica Hausner (centre left) Mati Diop (centre) and Melanie Laurent (right)
Members of the jury - headed for the first time by a black man, US director Spike Lee - arrived last night and will give their traditional press conference today, before embarking on their 24-film marathon.
'Covid is still there, but being here for the return of the festival, in the opening film... it's a huge sense of relief and excitement,' US actor Adam Driver told AFP.
Driver co-stars with French actor Marion Cotillard in the opening night film, 'Annette', a musical directed by cult favourite Leos Carax.
The festival palace - a squat, concrete construction dubbed 'the bunker' - is draped in a poster featuring Lee, in oversize spectacles, peering between two palm trees.
His jury this year has a female majority, including US actor Maggie Gyllenhaal, Canadian-French singer Mylene Farmer and French-Senegalese actor Mati Diop.
Other members include Tahar Rahim, star of 2009 film 'A Prophet', and South Korean actor Song Kang-ho, who dazzled in the festival's last winner two years ago, 'Parasite'.
The jury for the 74th Cannes Film Festival headed by Spike Lee has a female majority and includes US star Maggie Gyllenhaal (pictured), brother of Jake Gyllenhaal
French-Canadian singer Mylene Farmer (pictured right) also appears on the film festival's jury along with actors Tahar Rahim (pictured left) and Song Kang-ho who starred in the South Korean sensation 'Parasite'
As evening falls, stars will strut down the recycled red carpet, which has been chopped in size as part of a green makeover.
American actor and director Jodie Foster is guest of honour at the opening ceremony, and will be awarded an honorary Palme d'Or before the screening of 'Annette' gets underway.
Foster has won two academy awards and first attended the film festival aged just 13 for her role in Taxi Driver, which won a Palme d'Or in 1976.
The film is Carax's first since 'Holy Motors' nine years ago, which also competed at Cannes.
It tells the story of a celebrity couple and their mysterious child, the titular Annette.
Cotillard told AFP that after months of pandemic-induced confinement, the tragic love story 'invites the spectators to come and be transported, to be present at a great spectacle'.
Spike Lee greets Jodie Foster (left) who is the festival's guest of honor and is set to receive an honorary Palme d'Or. Foster has won two academy awards and first attended the Cannes film festival as a 13 year old for her role in Taxi Driver, which won a Palme d'Or in 1976
The first film to be shown at the festival, Annette, stars Addam Driver (left) and Marion Cotillard (right) and tells the story of a celebrity couple with a mysterious child
Her co-star Driver famously hates watching himself on screen, and said this film will be no exception.
When the lights go out, he said he will flee to an office until it is finished.
'I sit there playing with a stapler or some scotch tape and come back when the lights are back on,' he smiled.
'And I act as if I'd been there the whole time!'
This year, 24 films will compete for the festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or.
Festival director Thierry Fremaux has promised that the line-up 'packs a punch'.
Festival director Thierry Fremaux (left) promised that this year's festival line-up 'packs a punch' as he spoke to the media alongside Cannes Film festival President Pierre Lescure (right).
The directors vying for glory include such perennial Cannes favourites as Italy's Nanni Moretti with his new film 'Tre Piani,' France's Jacques Audiard ('Les Olympiades') and Thailand's master of the slow burn, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, with his English-language debut ('Memoria').
Other contenders include Sean Penn, whose Africa-based humanitarian love story 'The Last Face' bombed at Cannes in 2016; Iran's two-time Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi; and Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov, who is barred from leaving the country due to an embezzlement conviction widely seen as punishment for his criticism of President Vladimir Putin.
With just four female directors in the competition, the festival's tendency to pick the usual (male) suspects of the arthouse elite is once again under scrutiny.
Only one woman has won the Palme d'Or in 73 editions of the festival: Jane Campion for 'The Piano' in 1993.
Films competing for the Cannes Palme d'Or this year
Here are the 24 films competing for the Palme d'Or as the Cannes Film Festival returns from July 6 to 17, with a jury led by US director Spike Lee.
- 'Annette' by Leos Carax, France - Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard star as a glamorous celebrity couple whose lives are upended by the arrival of their first child. The first film in a decade from auteur Carax is also the first in English from the eccentric French mind behind arthouse favourites 'Holy Motors' and 'The Lovers on the Bridge.'
- 'The French Dispatch' by Wes Anderson, US - Film fans can never get enough of Wes Anderson, and his latest quirky bauble can be counted on for more obsessively curated sets and shots, 20th-century nostalgia, family disharmony and Bill Murray. Plus yet more megastars in Anderson's menagerie in the form of Timothee Chalamet and Benicio Del Toro, and a set-up - foreign correspondents in France - that is likely to play well with critics at Cannes.
- Benedetta' by Paul Verhoeven, Netherlands - From 'Robocop' to 'Basic Instinct' to 'Starship Troopers,' Dutch director Paul Verhoeven has always walked a fine line between gaudy schlock and cinematic genius. His latest tale recounts a lesbian affair in a 17th-century convent, starring Virginie Efira and Charlotte Rampling.
- 'Flag Day' by Sean Penn, US - Star actor Penn again steps behind the camera for a film about a conman whose daughter struggles to come to terms with his choice of profession. Penn stars alongside his own daughter Dylan, as well as Josh Brolin.
- 'A Hero' by Asghar Farhadi, Iran - Iran's lauded director Asghar Farhadi has worked in multiple languages but returns to his homeland for his latest, details of which are scant. He has won awards all over, including Oscars for 'A Separation' and 'The Salesman', which also won best screenplay at Cannes.
- 'Tout s'est Bien Passe' (Everything Went Fine) by Francois Ozon, France - Featuring French stars Sophie Marceau and Charlotte Rampling, France's prolific and eclectic director Francois Ozon tells the story of a woman asked by her father to help him die.
- 'Tre Piani' (Three Floors) by Nanni Moretti, Italy - Exactly 20 years after winning the Palme d'Or with 'The Son's Room' and nine years after heading the main jury at Cannes, Moretti is back with his first-ever adaptation of a novel, which looks at three families who live on three different floors, in three chapters.
- 'Titane' by Julia Ducournau, France - Starring French veteran actor Vincent Lindon, 'Titane' is the second feature after 'Grave' by horror film specialist Ducournau, which she reportedly wrote in six weeks between two Covid-19 lockdowns.
- 'Red Rocket' by Sean Baker, US - The comedy-drama by indie filmmaker Baker features Simon Rex as an over-the-hill porn star who returns to his hometown in Texas, where he is not very welcome, and hopes to build on the success of 'The Florida Project'.
- 'Petrov's Flu' by Kirill Serebrennikov, Russia - An alcohol-fuelled stroll by a cartoonist and his friend in post-Soviet Russia brings back childhood memories that get mixed up with the present. Serebrennikov is unable to attend Cannes due to a criminal conviction, widely seen as punishment for his political views.
- 'France' by Bruno Dumont, France - The gritty director adapts a novel by Charles Peguy, killed in World War I, updating it to chart the fall from grace of a star TV reporter in contemporary France.
- 'Nitram' by Justin Kurzel, Australia - Following a smash hit adaptation of 'Macbeth' starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard and a less successful adaptation of video game 'Assassin's Creed', the Australian director looks at events leading up to the Port Arthur mass shooting in Tasmania that led to gun control reforms.
- 'Memoria' by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand - Tilda Swinton stars in the slow-burn director's first film in English. It comes 11 years after he won the Palme d'Or for the dreamlike 'Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives'. Shot in Colombia, 'Memoria' follows a Scottish horticulturist as she tries to understand strange sounds in the night.
- 'Lingui' by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Chad - Set in the outskirts of N'Djamena, 'Lingui' tells the story of an adolescent whose unwanted pregnancy puts her in conflict with her country's traditions and the law. Haroun lives in France, but most of his films have been produced in his birth country of Chad, which he left during unrest in the 1980s.
- 'Paris 13th District' by Jacques Audiard, France - Audiard won the Palme in 2015 for 'Dheepan', but is best-known abroad for 'The Prophet' and 'Rust and Bone'. His latest is based on three graphic novels by US author Adrian Tomine and set in a mixed neighbourhood of Paris. It features four young people who are sometimes friends, sometimes lovers, and sometimes both.
- 'The Restless' by Joachim Lafosse, Belgium - Starring Leila Bekhti and Damien Bonnard, the film tells the story of a couple under stress due to Bonnard's character suffering from bipolar disorder, and who do their best to protect their child.
- 'The Divide' by Catherine Corsini, France - Two decades after her film 'Replay' entered the Cannes competition, Corsini returns with a drama about a couple stuck in a hospital that comes under siege during a violent Paris demonstration inspired by the Yellow Vests movement.
- 'The Worst Person in the World' by Joachim Trier, Norway - A film about love and its complications, Trier's latest concludes an accidental trilogy of Oslo-based films exploring exclusion and isolation. It tells the story of Julie, turning 30 and looking for answers in a new relationship, only to be let down by reality.
- 'Hytti No 6' (Compartment No 6) by Juho Kuosmanen, Finland - Two strangers - a Finnish woman and a gloomy Russian - share a train compartment winding its way up to the Arctic circle in a road movie set against the backdrop of the 1980s Soviet Union. Kuosmanen hopes to follow the success of his charming, low-key boxing flick, 'The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki'.
- 'Casablanca Beats' by Nabil Ayouch, France-Morocco - Ayouch rocks the suburbs of Casablanca with a film about young people seeking an outlet through hip-hop in an underprivileged neighbourhood made infamous in 2003 after a group of radicalised local youth carried out suicide bombings in the city.
- 'Ha'Berech' (Ahed's Knee) by Nadav Lapid, Israel - After winning prizes in Locarno, Cannes and Berlin for his first three films, Lapid explores two battles waged by an Israeli director, one against the death of freedom and one against the death of a mother, both of which are doomed to failure.
- 'Drive My Car' by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan - An aging, widowed actor looking for a chauffeur ends up hiring a 20-year-old woman. Things go wrong between them at first, but then a special relationship emerges.
- 'Bergman Island' by Mia Hansen-Love, France - An American film-making couple spends a summer on Faro, the windswept Baltic island that inspired Ingmar Bergman. Reality and fiction start to blur as the weeks pass.
- 'A Felesegem Tortenete' (The Story of My Wife) by Ildiko Enyedi, Hungary - Featuring France's Lea Seydoux, who features in three of the films in competition this year, Enyedi's film kicks off with a bet by a sea captain that he'll marry the first woman who walks in. It follows Enyedi's Golden Bear win at Berlin in 2017 for 'On Body and Soul'.
