Films in the running for the Palme d´Or at Cannes

CANNES: From the tale of a mysterious beast to a migrant who finds he can levitate after being shot on a border fence, these are the 19 movies competing in the main competition at this week´s Cannes film festival which gets under way on May 17:

Wonderstruck

Photo: courtest Wonderstruck

Todd Haynes in back in period mode after his huge hit "Carol" with the first of two Amazon-backed movies to have made the cut. Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams star in the story of two deaf children living parallel lives in the 1920s and 1970s.

Jupiter´s Moon

Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo -- who won the newcomers prize with "White God" in 2014 -- has turned his lens on the European migrant crisis, with this story of a young refugee who discovers amazing powers when he is shot.

 

The Beguiled

Sofia Coppola´s starry and much-touted American Civil War thriller, a remake of the 1971 movie with Clint Eastwood, features Colin Farrell as a wounded soldier who seduces the women around him, including Nicole Kidman and Kirsten Dunst.

 

Redoubtable

Photo: courtesy Hazanavicius Michel

The buzz is also good on this cheeky "comedy" about the legendary New Wave movie director Jean-Luc Godard from Michel Hazanavicius, the man behind the whimsical multi-Oscar winner "The Artist".

 

Okja

Netflix are pushing the boat out for their big-budget "E.T."-like "creature feature" "Okja", starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Tilda Swinton, which tells the tale of a girl who risks everything to protect a shy giant animal.

 

The Meyerowitz Stories

The streaming giant has also snapped up Noah "While We´re Young" Baumbach´s story about a neurotic New York boho family trying to deal with their difficult artist father. Ben Stiller, Emma Thompson, Candice Bergen and Dustin Hoffman complete a top-notch cast.

 

You Were Never Really Here

Scotland´s Lynne Ramsay made her Cannes debut with the unforgettable "Ratcatcher". This year she will close the festival with this drama of a war veteran (Joaquin Phoenix) who tries to save a victim of sex-trafficking.

 

Loveless

Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev wowed Cannes in 2014 with "Leviathan", a darkly funny meditation on family bonds and religion. Family is again the focus of his new film about a clan with an aversion to affection.

 

Good Time

Billed as a grindhouse movie with a brain, New York indie brothers Benny and Josh Safdie have cast "Twilight" heartthrob Robert Pattinson as a bank robber struggling to evade the police.

 

Happy End

No one has ever won the Palme d´Or three times. But with Isabelle Huppert again by his side fresh from her accolades for "Elle", Austrian-born Michael Haneke could write his place in history with this family drama set in northern France against the backdrop of the migrant crisis.

The Square

The Swedish director Ruben Ostlund best known for "Snow Therapy" was a late entry with his dystopian tale of a place without rules where people can do what they want.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell team up for the second time in the competition, this time in the story of a boy trying to bring a surgeon into his dysfunctional family, with disastrous consequences. With Greek maestro Yorgos Lanthimos at the helm, expect the weird.

 

Rodin

Gerard Depardieu has already had a go at playing France´s greatest sculptor. This time Vincent Lindon picks up the chisel to portray the artist in a biopic that marks the centenary of his death.

 

In The Fade

Hamburg´s Fatih Akin of "Head-On" fame returns to home ground in a promising story of vengeance set among Germany´s Turkish community.

 

 

Amant Double (The Double Lover)

No one does erotic thrillers like French director Francois "Swimming Pool" Ozon. His latest follows a young woman who falls in love with her therapist before realising he´s not who she thought he was.

 

120 Beats Per Minute

Drama by Franco-Moroccan director Robin Campillo set among a group of people working with an AIDS charity in Paris in the 1990s.

 

Radiance

Japan´s Naomi Kawase returns to the competition three years after her "Still the Water" with a film following a photographer whose eyesight is failing.

 

The Day After

South Korean director Hong Sang-Soo is bringing two films to Cannes. His new feature "The Day After" is in the main competition with a special screening for "Claire´s Camera", which features Isabelle Huppert, and was partly shot during last year´s festival.

 

A Gentle Creature

A woman tries to learn the truth about her husband held in a remote prison in Russia when a package for him is returned to her in Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa´s sombre story.