New films by Mike Leigh, Stephen Frears and Sophie Fiennes figure in the line-up of the 63rd Cannes Film Festival, which was announced at a press conference in Paris this morning. As expected, Leigh's Another Year will vie for the Palme d'Or, the only British film to be selected. Frears's Tamara Drewe, based on the Guardian comic strip, plays out of competition, as does Oliver Stone's Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps and Woody Allen's London-set You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. Also out of competition, Fiennes's Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, a film about the artist Anselm Kiefer, gets a special screening.
The festival, which runs 12-23 May, will also unveil new work from Bertrand Tavernier, the actor Mathieu Amalric, Nikita Mikhalkov, Abbas Kiarostami, Takeshi Kitano, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Doug Liman, the lone American in competition. Click here for the full line-up. The jury, under the previously announced presidency of Tim Burton, consists of Kate Beckinsale, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Alberto Barbera, Emmanuel Carrère, Benicio Del Toro, Victor Erice and Shekhar Kapur. The opening-night film is Ridley Scott's Robin Hood.
Publicity for the conference received a dent as a result of a boycott by the four major press agencies protesting at an exclusive deal signed by the festival with Canal Plus and the pay-TV channel Orange, which reportedly gives these exclusive rights to red-carpet and press-conference coverage.
