Gillian Anderson, Rami Malek, Cara Delevingne and John Travolta are expected to walk the red carpet at Cannes this year, as the world’s most influential film festival unveiled an auteur-heavy lineup for its 79th edition.

Competing for the coveted Palme d’Or will be new films by heavyweights Pedro Almodóvar, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Paweł Pawlikowski, László Nemes and Asghar Farhadi.

Spanish director Almodóvar, who previously won awards at Cannes for All About My Mother and Volver, makes a return with Bitter Christmas, about a group of film-maker friends who cannibalise each other’s lives for their work.

Sandra Hüller stars as the daughter of German novelist Thomas Mann in Oscar-winning Polish film-maker’s Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, set on the eve of the Manns’ return from American exile after the second world war.

Hungarian director Nemes, who won an Oscar for Son of Saul in 2016, returns with French resistance drama Moulin, while Romanian director Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) makes a comeback with Norway-set Fjord.

Exiled Russian auteur Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan) is to premiere his film Minotaur, a political thriller about a Russian business executive who discovers his wife is having an affair, while two-time Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) brings Parallel Lives, starring Isabelle Huppert and Vincent Cassel.

Two of Japan’s leading film-makers will present new films on the French Riviera, with Drive My Car director Ryusuke Hamaguchi showing All of a Sudden, set in a Parisian nursing home, and the premiere of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s AI-themed science-fiction drama Sheep in the Box.

After talk around the fringes of last year’s festival was dominated by US president Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on “movies made in foreign lands”, this year’s competition lineup is notable for a near-total absence of American directors.

The only US director in the main competition is Ira Sachs with The Man I Love, a musical fantasy depicting the impact of the Aids epidemic on struggling artists, starring Rami Malek, Tom Sturridge and Rebecca Hall.

In the Un Certain Regard slot there will be premieres for American film-maker Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, starring Gillian Anderson, and Jordan Firstman’s directorial debut Club Kid featuring himself, Cara Delevingne, Diego Calva and Eldar Isgandarov.

Hollywood star Andy Garcia’s noir-ish Diamond will be shown out of competition but comes with a starry cast including Bill Murray, Dustin Hoffman, Vicky Krieps and Danny Huston.

This year’s Cannes film festival will take place on the Côte d’Azur from 12 to 23 May 2026. The jury of the festival’s 79th edition will be presided over by South Korean director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy), taking over from French actor Juliette Binoche.

Cannes director Thierry Frémaux said 2,491 films were submitted for the festival, from 141 countries. “That’s 1,000 more than just 10 years ago,” he said at Thursday’s press conference.

The festival has already announced that it will present John Travolta’s directorial debut, Propeller One-Way Night Coach, an adaptation of his own 1997 book about a young aviation enthusiast embarking on his first flight across America. The Hollywood star is himself a licensed pilot.

Leading the documentary lineup, Stephen Soderbergh will present John Lennon: The Last Interview, centred on the interview that the former Beatle gave the afternoon before he was shot in December 1980.

France’s libertine-footballer icon Eric Cantona is certain to grace the Croisette this year, as the former French international and Manchester United striker is the subject of a new feature documentary in the special screenings section, including interviews with David Beckham and Alex Ferguson, and a score by Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll.

Football rivalries will be a big theme at Cannes this year. The Match, by Argentine director Juan Cabral and Spanish film-maker Santiago Franco, will dive into the 1986 “hand of God” World Cup quarter final between England and Argentina, bringing to a head simmering rivalries over the Falkland Islands.

There will also be a special screening for veteran US director Ron Howard’s eponymously titled documentary about photographer Richard Avedon.

Frémaux said the announced titles made up “95%” of the complete lineup. Cannes is known for sneaking further titles into the main competition closer to the start of the festival.