72nd Cannes Film Festival lineup unveiled

The line-up of the 72nd Cannes Film Festival has been unveiled, with veteran directors Terence Malik and Ken Loach set to present new films.

Several big name former winners head up this year's competition - including British director Ken Loach, who won the Palme d'Or in 2016 for "I, Daniel Blake" which he said at the time would be his final film.

His new offering is no less political than that film was - "Sorry, I missed you" is about freelancers struggling to survive.

Reclusive director Terence Malik is also back, with the story of a German conscientious objector executed by the Nazis in 1943.

However, it's a zombie film that will open the competition, as festival director Thierry Fremaux explains.

Thierry Fremaux attends the Press Conference of the 72nd Cannes International Film Festival (Festival de Cannes) at the UGC Normandie in Paris, France on April 18, 2019. [Photo: Imagine China]

"The opening film is American, it comes to us from New York, from Jim Jarmusch and Universal Studios, a zombie film but an arthouse one, The Dead Don't Die. That will open Cannes this year and be released in France on the same day," says Fremaux.

The festival will be paying homage this year to the French director Agnes Varda, who died recently.

This year's poster is a tribute to her.

Pierre Lescure attends the Press Conference of the 72nd Cannes International Film Festival (Festival de Cannes) at the UGC Normandie in Paris, France on April 18, 2019. [Photo: Imagine China]

"Agnes was the first director of the French New Wave generation and really the only female director of the New Wave, Agnes is the first director to be at the heart of a poster for the 72nd Cannes Film Festival. So she is really a symbol of what the Festival aspires to be, of what it has represented for the past 72 years," says Pierre Lescure, the president of the festival.

Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu will preside this year's jury for the competition, which opens on May 14th.

Thierry Fremaux and Pierre Lescure attend the Press Conference of the 72nd Cannes International Film Festival (Festival de Cannes) at the UGC Normandie in Paris, France on April 18, 2019. [Photo: Imagine China]

But the big question is what's happened to Quentin Tarantino - whose new film "Once Upon A Time in Hollywood" starring Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio - was expected to be unveiled at Cannes.

The festival team is hinting there could still be room for him if the film can be finished in time.