Cannes Film Festival competition highlights

Renowned for his long-standing association with French actor Denis Lavant, director Leos Carax picked another star with a magnetic presence for his new film: In "Annette," which opens the festival, Adam Driver portrays a provocative stand-up comedian, while Marion Cotillard is a world-famous soprano. The couple's lives are upended with the birth of their child, who has a mysterious gift.

Remaining true to his twee style, Wes Anderson once again put together in his new film an all-star ensemble cast, including Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Lea Seydoux, Frances McDormand and Timothee Chalamet. And longtime collaborator Bill Murray is among them too, as the editor of "The French Dispatch," a fictional newspaper inspired by the filmmaker's love of "The New Yorker."

Cannes this year is in a way the Lea Seydoux film festival, as the Palme d'Or-winning French star is featured in four of the event's films, three of them in the competition. Beyond Wes Anderson's, the Bond girl also leads in "The Story of My Wife," by Hungarian filmmaker Ildiko Enyedi, and in Bruno Dumont's "France," in which she plays a war reporter whose life changes following a car accident.

Another film festival mainstay, British actor Tilda Swinton (shown here accepting an honorary Golden Lion in Venice in 2020) not only appears in Wes Anderson's movie, but also stars in "Memoria," Apichatpong Weerasethakul's English-language debut. The Thai independent filmmaker was the winner of the Palme d'Or in 2010 with "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives."

With "Flag Day," Sean Penn is in the competition with a father-daughter coming-of-age drama in which he stars alongside his daughter, Dylan Penn. The Hollywood actor is a Cannes veteran, having brought his films to the festival since his directorial debut, "The Indian Runner" (1991). He also served as jury president in 2008.

After working in Spanish, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi filmed his latest feature in Farsi, his home country, where he also previously directed "A Separation" (2011), winner of Berlin's Golden Bear, and "The Salesman" (2016). Both works went on to win an Oscar for best foreign-language film. "A Hero" stars popular Iranian actor Amir Jadidi.

Spending time on the island where Swedish director Ingmar Bergman lived and worked sounds like an inspiring retreat location for a couple of filmmakers (Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth). But after a while, the couple's personal problems take over, as fiction starts interfering with reality. French director Mia Hansen-Love is one of the only four women among the 24 films in Cannes' 2021 competition.

French director Francois Ozon's latest competition entry is an adaptation of Emmanuele Bernheim's autobiographical novel, "Everything Went Fine," which tells the story of an elderly man who asks his daughter to help him end his life. Sophie Marceau, Andre Dussollier, Geraldine Pailhas, Charlotte Rampling and Hanna Schygulla make up the drama's all-star cast.

Renowned for his provocative films, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven explores in "Benedetta" the story of a lesbian nun in an Italian convent during the 15th century, as plague ravages the city. Like various other competition entries, the movie was expected to be part of last year's lineup, but the production decided to wait for a year when the festival was canceled due to the pandemic.

After winning Berlin's Golden Bear in 2019 with "Synonyms," Israeli director Nadav Lapid has progressed to the Cannes competition with "Ahed’s Knee." Like his previous work, the film also explores an intimate story of a national identity crisis, this time through the lens of a young filmmaker.

Sentenced in June 2020 to a three-year suspended prison sentence in a verdict condemned by human rights groups, Russian dissident filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov will not be allowed to travel to Cannes with his film. "Petrov's Flu" tells the hallucinatory tale of a family trying to survive a flu pandemic — but it was conceived before the COVID-19 outbreak, while the director was under house arrest.