Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris will open the 64th Cannes Film Festival on the evening of May 11. Allen’s fascination with France and Cannes and the film festival’s admiration of his films are well known. Midnight in Paris, which the festival director Thierry Frémaux described as “a wonderful love letter to Paris” also stars Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

The competition lineup of 20 films is an eclectic mix from Cannes veterans, directors well-known, but making their Cannes appearance for the first time, and two debut filmmakers who will be in the reckoning for Camera d’Or as well. Nanni Moretti (Habemus Papam), Naomi Kawase (Hanezu), Pedro Almodovar (The Skin I Live In), Dardenne brothers (The Kid with a Bike), Aki Kurismaki (Le Havre), Lors Von Trier (Melancholia), Terence Malik (The Tree of Life), Paolo Sorrentino (This Must Be the Place) and Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Once Upon A Time In Anatolia) had already been there. The Dardenne Brothers may be looking at their third Palm d’Or having won the awards in 1999 (Rosetta) and in 2005 (L’Enfant).

This is the first time directors Takashi Mike’s Death of a Samurai, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive and Radu Mihaileanu’s The Source are coming to Cannes and their films would be of keen interest because their body of films are well known.

The only German film in the competition is Austrian director Markus Schleinzer’s debut feature Michael. He will compete for Camera d’Or also, along with Australian Julia Leigh’s debut venture Sleeping Beauty. Ten out of the 20 films in this section has a French connection — four among them are exclusively French productions. There are two Italian directors (Nanni Moretti and Paolo Sorentino), two US productions (Drive and The Tree of Life) and two Japanese films (Hanezu by Naomi Kawase and Death of A Samurai by Takashi Mike) that are in the lineup.