James Mottram

The Cannes Film Festival kicks off next week, and there can be no doubt about the star attraction at this 72nd edition of the world’s most prestigious movie gathering. Quentin Tarantino’s epic nod to 1960s cinema Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – a late addition to the competition line-up – will bring glamour to the red carpet with stars Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie, who plays Sharon Tate, the actress-wife to director Roman Polanski who was murdered by the Manson Family.

Arguably, despite an official selection that includes new films from Cannes regulars Ken Loach, the Dardenne Brothers, Pedro Almodóvar and Jim Jarmusch, this was the film the festival needed. Last year’s squabble with Netflix over competition rules has still not been resolved, although psychological horror Wounds – which is being distributed by the streaming giant – will appear in Director’s Fortnight, away from the official competition. Still, 25 years on from Tarantino’s Palme d’Or win for Pulp Fiction, his return feels essential for the festival’s cachet.

Led by Alejandro González Iñárritu – who previously directed DiCaprio to an Oscar in The Revenant – the jury will have an intriguing line-up of 21 movies to digest before deciding who takes this year’s Palme. The opening slot goes to another friend of the festival, Jim Jarmusch, who will get proceedings underway with The Dead Don’t Die, a zombie comedy starring Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny and a sword-wielding Tilda Swinton, complete with strong Scots accent.

Given the opening film in Cannes is often forgettable, this is rather more promising – with Jarmusch liable to bring the same off-beat humour he carved out for 2013’s vampire tale Only Lovers Left Alive. With a cast also featuring Tom Waits, Iggy Pop and the RZA, simply the sight of a post-Zombieland Murray deadpanning his way past the undead should be enough to get the festival off to a good start.

While we won’t be seeing him on the red carpet or at the press conference, the media-shy Terrence Malick is also back with A Hidden Life. His last movie in Cannes was with 2011’s spellbinding ode to creation, The Tree of Life, another film to claim Cannes’ top prize. This latest work deals with a true story – that of the Austrian-born Franz Jägerstätter (played by August Diehl), a conscientious objector who refused to fight for the Nazis in the Second World War.

Little else is known about the film – there isn’t even a trailer online yet – though it co-stars Matthias Schoenaerts and Michael Nyqvist, who died almost two years ago, making this long-gestating project his very last screen appearance. At the opposite end of the scale, just about everything is known about Pain and Glory, the 21st movie in the distinguished career of Pedro Almodóvar and a film that’s already been released in the director’s native Spain.

It stars Almodóvar’s long-term collaborator Antonio Banderas as Salvador Mallo, a filmmaker with failing health whose body-of-work is about to receive an homage at the Spanish Cinematheque. For a festival like Cannes that lavishly celebrates the art of cinema – a public experience under threat with the arrival of companies like Netflix beaming movies directly to your TV – it feels like the perfect movie to take centre stage.

On the social realist front, two-time Palme winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, will return with Young Ahmed, which deals with Muslim extremism as a pupil plots to kill his teacher. Could it be the festival’s most controversial talking point? Tarantino aside, cinema’s usual provocateurs are conspicuously absent this year – although Denmark’s Nicolas Winding Refn is back out of competition with the first two episodes of his TV show Too Old To Die Young.

The festival will also welcome back Ken Loach, who was last in Cannes in 2016 with I, Daniel Blake – another Palme d’Or winner – and one of the fiercest films of his 55-year career. His new film Sorry We Missed You promises much the same sort of anger. Set in Newcastle, like I, Daniel Blake, the story of a delivery driver (Kris Hitchen) struggling in contemporary Britain again sees Loach collaborate with his regular Scottish writer Paul Laverty.

Other British-made films – both out-of-competition – also look set to be amongst the most talked-about in Cannes. Dexter Fletcher’s Rocketman stars Taron Edgerton as Elton John in a biopic liable to get audiences a-foot-stomping shortly before its May 22nd release in the UK. Then there’s Asif Kapadia’s Diego Maradona, his third documentary following the award-winners Senna and Amy that’ll take on the iconic Argentinean footballer, famed for his ‘Hand of God’ goal against England in the 1986 World Cup.

After last year’s female-only, #TimesUp-inspired red carpet for Girls of the Sun, this year four films in competition are directed by women. One of the most intriguing is Austrian director Jessica Hauser’s first English-language movie, Little Joe, a sci-fi starring Emily Beecham. Also exciting is Portrait of a Lady on Fire, an 18th Century-set tale of a painter and her subject – a bride-to-be. Directed by Céline Sciamma, it’s her first film since 2014’s excellent Girlhood. With this and more besides, it’s going to be a glorious two weeks for film on the French Riviera.

The Cannes Film Festival runs from May 14th to May 25th.