From Sean Penn to Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Almodovar???, Nicolas Winding Refn???, Ken Loach and the Dardenne brothers, an A-list of arthouse directors will be represented in the Cannes Film Festival competition next month.
With slim pickings for Australians so far outside a handful of actors, the famous French festival will open with Allen's Cafe Society, a 1930s romance that stars Kristen Stewart, Bruce Willis and Jesse Eisenberg.
The competition for the Palme d'Or, as announced in Paris by festival head Thierry Fremaux??? and president Pierre Lescure, is notable for the number of well-known directors on the international festival circuit. 
Penn (Into The Wild, The Pledge) will head to the south of France with The Last Face, which has Charlize Theron and Javier Bardem as aid workers who fall in love in war-torn Liberia.
In Paterson, Jarmusch (Dead Man, Broken Flowers) has Adam Driver as a New Jersey bus driver.
Almodovar, the flamboyant Spanish director whose films include Bad Education,Volver and The Skin I Live In, is in competition with Julieta, a drama inspired by three stories by Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Munro.
Winding Refn, the Danish director best known for Drive and Only God Forgives, is there with The Neon Demon, which he calls a "style-drenched horror movie" with Elle Fanning playing a young model preyed on by jealous rivals. Keanu Reeves and Australians Abby Lee and Bella Heathcote are also in the cast.
After making a splash with Midnight Special, American director Jeff Nichols has Loving with Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga as an interracial couple in 1950s Virginia.
British veteran social realist filmmaker Ken Loach (Kes, Looking for Eric) is in competition with I, Daniel Blake, about an injured carpenter and single mother struggling to get by on welfare.
Romanian director Cristian Mungiu???, a past Palme d'Or winner with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, is represented with Baccalaureat, which centres on a small-town doctor played by Adrian Titieni.
French favourite Olivier Assayas has reunited with Kristen Stewart after Clouds of Sils Maria in Personal Shopper, which has the Twilight star as an American personal shopper for a celebrity in Paris.
In the thriller Elle, directed by Paul Verhoeven (Black Book, Basic Instinct, RoboCop) Isabelle Huppert plays an executive for a video-game company who seeks revenge after a traumatic home invasion.
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the Belgian brothers whose films include Two Days, One Night and The Kid With A Bike, are in competition with The Unknown Girl, about a young doctor investigating the identity of a patient who died after being refused treatment.
British director Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights) is competing with American Honey, which follows group of young people who travel the country selling magazine subscriptions.
Korean director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Stoker) is represented with The Handmaiden, about a female pickpocket who teams up with a con man to scam a wealthy Japanese heiress, while the Philippines' Brillante Mendoza (Grandmother, Thy Womb) has Ma Rosa in competition. 
And young French-Canadian director Xavier Dolan (Mommy, Heartbeats) joins a talented line-up with It's Only the End of the World, about a writer who returns home to announce his imminent death to his immediate family.
Russell Crowe's new movie with Ryan Gosling, Shane Black's The Nice Guys, is screening out of competition, as is Steven Spielberg's The BFG and Jodie Foster's Money Monster.
Mad Max: Fury Road director George Miller is president of the jury that will decide the competition winner.
The festival runs   May 11 to 22.