Nice airport is buzzing and camera bulbs are flashing as stars arrive today for the 2015 Cannes Film Festival in the south of France. The festival will open tonight with a gala screening of the gritty French youth crime drama La Tete Haute (Standing Tall), a film that bucks the trend for lighter, more glamorous opening movies.
American filmmaker brothers Joel and Ethan Coen will head the competition jury for the 12-day event, which features films from around the world including screen versions of Macbeth and The Little Prince.
In this year's line-up, five French films will compete for the prestigious Palme D'Or prize, but the selection has already been criticised by some for including too many films with Hollywood stars and English-language dialogue.
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"Looking at this year's official selection, an Anglophone virus appears to be on the rampage," says Steve Rose in The Guardian. Rose is referring to a number of films by European directors crossing over into English for the first time, such as Greece's Yorgos Lanthimos, whose latest work, The Lobster, was filmed in Dublin, and stars Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz and John C Reilly.
There's also Matteo Garrone, whose mafia drama Gomorrah won the Cannes Grand Jury prize in 2008, but whose latest film Tale of Tales is also in English and features Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel and Toby Jones, as well as Paolo Sorrentino, whose latest feature, Youth, stars Sir Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel as old friends holidaying in the Alps.
"Is this an ominous sign of Hollywood killing off foreign cinema?" asks Rose.
But the festival has been praised for championing more women directors this year, says the BBC. La Tete Haute's director Emmanuelle Bercot will become the second woman to win the coveted opening night slot since the festival began in 1946.
Meanwhile, legendary 1960s New Wave director Agnes Varda will become the first woman to receive an honorary Palme d'Or. Hollywood actress Natalie Portman will present a special screening of her directorial debut, A Tale of Love and Darkness, about the early years of Israel.
The most hotly-anticipated films in competition at the festival this year include Australian director Justin Kurzel's screen adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth which stars Michael Fassbender in the title role and Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth. The line-up also includes Todd Haynes's Carol, an adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara as lesbian lovers in 1950s New York.
Gus Van Sant's The Sea of Trees is also getting attention. It stars Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey as an American who travels to a forest in Japan to kill himself.
Highlights among the films screening out of competition include Woody Allen's professor-meets-student affair, Irrational Man, starring Joaquin Phoenix, and Mad Max: Fury Road, the latest instalment in George Miller's post-apocalyptic action series.
Pixar's latest film, Inside Out, will get its world premiere at Cannes. The animation about competing emotions in the mind of a young girl features voices by Amy Poehler, Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling. Mark Osborne's film adaptation of Antoine Saint Exupery's children's classic, The Little Prince, will also debut at the festival out of competition.
It's a poor year for the Brits. Asif Kapadia's documentary, Amy, about the late singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse, is the only film in the line-up with a UK director. Todd Haynes's Carol, while shot in the US and directed by an American, is co-produced by British film company Number 9 films.
