This year’s Cannes film festival is set to kick off with Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die, a star-studded zombie movie in which the undead battle local cops Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny and Adam Driver.
The comedy, which will be in contention for top prize the Palme d’Or, has been selected as the opening night movie on 14 May, and will be released in France on the same day, before premiering elsewhere in June.
The supporting cast, many of them Jarmusch regulars, includes Tilda Swinton, Selena Gomez, Steve Buscemi, Rosie Perez, Danny Glover, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits and Caleb Landry Jones.
Jarmusch won the Caméra d’Or first film prize in 1984 for Stranger Than Paradise and has returned to the festival with most of his films, including Paterson, which also starred Driver, in 2016. Other titles premiered by the director at Cannes include Broken Flowers, which starred Murray and Swinton, as well as Only Lovers Left Alive, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Dead Man, Mystery Train and Down By Law. Coffee and Cigarettes: Somewhere in California won the short film Palme d’Or in 1993.
When and where is it?
The festival takes place in the French resort town of Cannes in the late spring, normally in mid-May - this year it's 14-25 May.
What are the big films?
Twenty-one films have been selected to compete for the Palme d'Or, including Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino, A Hidden Life by Terrence Malick, and Ken Loach's Sorry We Missed You. There are also a number of special screenings, including Asif Kapadia's Diego Maradona documentary, Elton John biopic Rocketman, and Gael García Bernal's directorial debut Chicuarotes. There are two parallel festivals, the Directors' Fortnight and Critics' Week, each with their own line-up.
What about all the paparazzi?
Cannes isn't just about the art of film. Every night sees a large-scale premiere with a walk up the famous red-carpeted steps outside the giant Lumière cinema. (That's why the festival likes selecting films with big-name Hollywood actors.) Cannes also finds lots of excuses to bring in major stars: for example, 1982's Rambo: First Blood is getting a screening, meaning Sylvester Stallone will pitch up on the Riviera.
Opening night picks at the festival in recent years have tended to the serious. Last year’s was Asghar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows, a thriller featuring Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz.
This year’s Cannes jury will be chaired by Alejandro González Iñárritu. The festival will be on until 25 May and other titles rumoured to be playing include Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory, Dexter Fletcher’s Rocketman and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. No Netflix titles will screen at the festival after artistic director Thierry Frémaux failed to reach a compromise with Netflix boss Ted Sarandos over whether they would be eligible for competition.
