High kicks and controversy being served up at Cannes

Paris

THE Cannes Film Festival will next week lift the curtain on 12 days of glamour, movies, deals and parties drawing the elite of the cinema world, from Hollywood honchos to arthouse auteurs.

Under the Riviera sun - and high security - some of the industry's biggest stars, directors and producers will be turning out to tread the red carpet during the May 13-24 event.

The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, will definitely be there, as co-presidents of the jury that decides the festival's prestigious Palme d'Or prize. Other jury members include actors Jake Gyllenhaal, Sienna Miller and Sophie Marceau.

The movies in competition range from Hollywood-style fare, in the form of Sicario, about a CIA operation to bring down a Mexican drug lord, to Asian martial arts in The Assassin, to a Hungarian take on the Holocaust in Son of Saul.

Some out-of-competition projections, though, are more widely anticipated. Among them is Mad Max: Fury Road, a sci-fi dystopian desert-carnage reboot of the franchise that made Mel Gibson famous, but which now stars British actor Tom Hardy. Woody Allen's latest, Irrational Man, is also awaited, as are the big-budget animations The Little Prince and Inside Out, and Israeli-US actress Natalie Portman's directorial debut, A Tale of Love and Darkness.

Gaspar Noe, an Argentine director who relishes shock cinema, will be showing his movie Love - suggested to be heavily pornographic, based on a movie poster he released online - in a midnight screening. Amy, a documentary about British singer Amy Winehouse who died of alcohol poisoning in 2011 aged 27, will also be getting an out-of-competition midnight projection. Her family have condemned the film as "misleading" and disassociated themselves from it.

This year, Europe easily dominates the competition field, accounting for 11 of the 19 movies vying for the golden Palme. Most of those are from a new generation of filmmakers in France and Italy.

For all of the hype surrounding the Cannes movie screenings, a lot of other activity will be going on at the festival through its market section, where backstage production deals and executive conferences are held and valuable contacts made. A talk by Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos on May 15 will be a filled to capacity. The US film and TV streaming company is one of the new big players shaking up the cinema industry. AFP