CANNES 2016 ANNOUNCES LINEUP: ADE, ARNOLD, MENDONCA FILHO MAKE THE CUT

The official slate for the 2016 Cannes Film Festival has been announced! Films from across four continents will compete for the one top award, the Palme d'Or, and citations in other categories decided upon by George Miller's jury. Three women compete in Official Selection, the most for five years (though still lagging behind Un Certain Regard); newcomer Maren Ade is among them, and she joins other welcome Official Selection virgins such as Kleber Mendonca Filho, Alain Guiraudie and Cristi Puiu, who makes for two Romanian filmmakers in the mix alongside former Palme recipient Cristian Mungiu. There are expected returns for Cannes mainstays such as Ken Loach (now unretired), Pedro Almodovar, Jim Jarmusch (with two separate films in play, including one as a Midnight Screening), and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, and welcome returns for Paul Verhoeven and Bruno Dumont; usual top comp regular Koreeda Hirokazu makes an appearance in Un Certain Regard, amid an unusually unknown lineup of directors. This year's Cannes Film Festival runs from the 11th to the 22nd of May; take a look at their currently-announced lineup below (more strands are TBA):

* Update *
Additional titles to Official Competition, Un Certain Regard, Special Screenings and Midnight Screenings, as of the 22nd of April, have been added, alongside the shock inclusion of Peshmerga on the 16th of May, the first time a film has entered the lineup mid-festival in Cannes' history.

Official Competition

American Honey (Andrea Arnold)

Aquarius (Kleber Mendonca Filho)

Elle (Paul Verhoeven)

From the Land of the Moon (Nicole Garcia)
Graduation (Cristian Mungiu)

The Handmaiden (Park Chan Wook)

I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach)

It's Only the End of the World (Xavier Dolan)

Julieta (Pedro Almodovar)

The Last Face (Sean Penn)

Loving (Jeff Nichols)

Ma' Rosa (Brillante Mendoza)

The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding Refn)

Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)

Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas)

The Salesman (Asghar Farhadi)

Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu)

Slack Bay (Bruno Dumont)
Staying Vertical (Alain Guiraudie)

Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)

The Unknown Girl (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne)

Un Certain Regard

After the Storm (Koreeda Hirokazu)

Apprentice (Boo Jun King)

Beyond the Mountains and Hills (Eran Kolirin)
Captain Fantastic (Matt Ross)

Clash (Mohamed Diab) - opening film

The Dancer (Stephanie di Giusto)

Dogs (Bogdan Mirica)

Harmonium (Fukada Koji)
Hell or High Water (David MacKenzie)

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki (Juho Kuosmanen)

Inversion (Behnam Behzadi)
The Long Night of Francisco Sanctis (Francisco Marquez and Andrea Testa)

Pericle (Stefano Mordini)
Personal Affairs (Maha Haj)

The Red Turtle (Michael Dudok de Wit)

The Stopover (Delphine Coulin and Muriel Coulin)

The Student (Kirill Serebrennikov)
The Transfiguration (Michael O'Shea)

Out of Competition

The BFG (Steven Spielberg)

Money Monster (Jodie Foster)

The Nice Guys (Shane Black)

The Wailing (Na Hong Jin)

Special Screenings

Le Cancre (Paul Vecchiali)

Chouf (Karim Dridi)

The Death of Louis XIV (Albert Serra)

Exile (Panh Rithy)
La Foret de Quinconces (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet)
Hissein Habre, A Chadian Tragedy (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun)
Peshmerga (Bernard-Henri Levy)

L'Ultima Spiaggia (Thanos Anastopoulos and Davide del Degan)
Wrong Elements (Jonathan Littell)

Midnight Screenings

Blood Father (Jean-Francois Richet)
Gimme Danger (Jim Jarmusch)

Train to Busan (Yeon Sang Ho)