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PARIS - Veteran directors Clint Eastwood, Steven Soderbergh and Wim Wenders will compete against upcoming filmmakers from across the world for the top prize at this year's Cannes film festival, organisers said Wednesday.
Canne's mix of old and new, of Hollywood glitz and auteur fare, has proven a recipe for success as the film industry's biggest annual festival gears up for its 61st edition from May 14 to May 25.
Festival organisers unveiled a list of 19 films from Asia, Europe, Latin America and the United States officially selected to compete for the prestigious Palme d'Or that winds up the yearly festival.
Selected out of competition will be the latest works from top-name directors Woody Allen and Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg will be bringing the year's most-awaited movie, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" -- the fourth instalment in the box office-busting series starring Harrison Ford as the archaeologist adventurer who had his first outing way back in 1981 "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
Woody Allen, a longstanding favourite at the Cannes filmfest, brings "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" starring Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem.
A kicking and punching "Kung-Fu Panda", an animated comedy-adventure from Dreamworks with a voice cast boasting Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu and Dustin Hoffman, has also been selected out of competition.
Eastwood's "The Changeling" is a thriller set in the 1920s starring Jolie while Soderbergh's "The Argentine" is about "Che" Guevara and stars Benicio Del Toro.
Among other directors vying for the Palme d'Or are Canada's Armenian-born Atom Egoyan, Brazil's Walter Salles, China's Jia Zhangke, Israeli Ari Folman, Pablo Trapero of Argentina and Nuri Bilge Ceylan of Turkey.
Heading the jury that will deliver the top honours is one-time Hollywood bad boy Sean Penn, the Oscar-winning US actor-turned director who most recently helmed the critically acclaimed 2007 drama "Into The Wild".
"The Cannes Film Festival has long been the epicentre in the discovery of new waves of filmmakers," Penn said on being named earlier this year."I very much look forward to participating."
Last year's Palme D'Or went to the harrowing Romanian drama "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" -- a wrenching story about a girl's illegal, backstreet abortion in communist-era Bucharest.
The 2007 jury was headed by British director Stephen Frears, and included actresses Maggie Cheung of Hong Kong, Toni Colette of Australia, and Turkey's Nobel prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk. - AFP/ra
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