THE 69th Cannes Film Festival is upon us. Rather fittingly, the world’s most prestigious cinematic event is being led this year by George Miller. Installed as jury president, the genial Australian director is back a year on from the triumphant unveiling of Mad Max: Fury Road. The film opened Cannes, blowing audiences away long before it swept the Oscars.

Whether Miller will preside over anything quite as stunning as Mad Max remains to be seen. With what is a rather Euro-and-U.S. centric line-up, there are plenty of familiar faces in competition, from Jim Jarmusch to Jeff Nichols to Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Opening the festival is one of the most familiar of all – Woody Allen – with Café Society, a 1930s Hollywood-set tale that marks his third time as the Cannes curtain-raiser.

In competition, the two-time Palme d’Or-winners, the Dardennes, are back with The Unknown Girl, starring Adèle Haenel as a doctor investigating the death of a patient who was refused treatment. Featuring two Dardenne regulars, Olivier Gourmet and Jérémie Renier, this tantalising socio-realist tale sounds right in the wheelhouse of the Belgian-born brothers.

The most prominent British film competing at the festival is Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake. Arriving two years after Jimmy’s Hall, the film many thought would be Loach’s last feature, when his producer hinted he may be heading for retirement, it’s once again penned by his Glasgow-raised writer-of-choice, Paul Laverty, twenty years after their first collaboration, Carla’s Song.

After the rather wistful Jimmy’s Hall, I, Daniel Blake promises to be one of the more hard-hitting films of the Loach-Laverty canon. Set in Newcastle, it stars Dave Johns as a carpenter who falls ill and must navigate the torturous red tape of the welfare state. Loach won the Palme d’Or for The Wind That Shakes The Barley ten years ago; don’t bet against him repeating the trick.

British director Andrea Arnold is one of three women – alongside France’s Nicole Garcia and Germany’s Maren Ade – in competition this year. A Cannes regular, after she claimed prizes for Red Road and Fish Tank, her new film American Honey is her first U.S. set project. A road movie, it follows a group of reprobates crossing the American Mid-West, selling magazine subscriptions and partying hard.

The film stars newcomer Sasha Lane, as a teenage runaway, and Shia LaBeouf, who became Lane’s real-life boyfriend during the shoot. In a festival somewhat starved of potential controversy, the paparazzi must be preying LaBeouf repeats his stunt at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival premiere of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac, when he wore a brown paper bag on his head inscribed with ‘I am not famous anymore’.

Still, it would be unfair to label Fremaux’s selection as safe. Dutch director Paul Verhoeven is back in competition, 24 years after he and a knickerless Sharon Stone shocked the Croisette with Basic Instinct. His latest film Elle stars festival legend Isabelle Huppert as a video games company exec who turns the tables on a man who raped her. Verhoeven has already dubbed it his “most subversive film” yet.

Also returning is Denmark’s Nicolas Winding Refn, who won Best Director in Cannes for his thrilling noir Drive before churning stomachs with the ultra-violent Only God Forgives. This latest effort, The Neon Demon, could go either way. It stars Elle Fanning in a tale Fremaux described as a “Danish cannibal horror film involving top models”. Keanu Reeves, Christina Hendricks and Bella Heathcote co-star.

If you’re looking for a film that could well feature in the awards mix at the end of the year, Jeff Nichols’ Loving has all the hallmarks of an Academy-friendly feature. Arriving just three months after his sci-fi Midnight Special premiere in Berlin, this feels like a real departure for the American auteur, who previously took features Take Shelter and Mud to Cannes.

Based on a harrowing true story of an interracial marriage that led to a landmark court-case, it features Australian actor Joel Edgerton – who featured in Midnight Special – and the Ethiopian-Irish rising star Ruth Negga. They play Richard and Mildred Loving, who were jailed in Virginia in 1958 for breaking state laws when they wed.

Meanwhile, Jim Jarmusch is back not once but twice. In competition he’ll be screening Paterson, a low-fi sounding tale of a bus driver who is also a poet. Playing him is Girls star Adam Driver, who feels like the most Jarmusch actor ever to walk the red carpet. Then there’s Gimme Danger, a documentary about punk band The Stooges that will play out of competition in a midnight slot. And, yes, Iggy Pop is coming…

The most high-profile non-competing film is easily Steven Spielberg’s The B.F.G. Based on Roald Dahl’s children’s tale, it stars recent Oscar-winner Mark Rylance (albeit virtually unrecognisable, with much CGI tinkering) as the titular Big Friendly Giant. The film co-stars English newcomer Ruby Barnhill as Sophie, the young girl he befriends.

Sure to be better received than Spielberg’s last film in Cannes – the underwhelming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – it’s likely to be an emotional unveiling. The adaptation was penned by Melissa Mathison, Spielberg’s erstwhile collaborator on 1982’s E.T. The Extra Terrestrial and former wife to Harrison Ford, who died last November, aged 65.

As for those little gems that Cannes always had buried across its sections, Boo Junfeng’s Apprentice is gaining some early buzz. Playing in Un Certain Regard, it’s a prison drama from Singapore that tells of the friendship struck between an executioner and the young man set to replace him. Who knows? Maybe it’ll wow the crowds like Mad Max did.

The 69th Cannes Film Festival runs from May 11 to 21