Essential guide to the Cannes Film Festival highlights

As the Cannes Film Festival kicks off, we preview the delights in store.

The Grand Theatre Lumiere in the Festival Palace during preparations before the start the 68th Cannes Film Festival. Regis Duvignau / Reuters

The Cannes Film Festival kicks off its 68th edition today, running until May 24 in the glamorous French coastal city, and this year The National will be there for the crucial opening weekend to bring you all the latest news and gossip from the global cinema industry.

The festival is an annual highlight in the world movie calendar, with award winners traditionally going on to great things both at the box office and other festival award ceremonies.

This year's line-up looks to be no exception. The event opens with Emanuaelle Bercot's Standing Tall – only the second time a film by a female director has opened the festival (after Diane Kurys's A Man in Love in 1987).

The selection came as a surprise to many industry-watchers. Bercot is largely unknown outside of her native France, and her tale of a juvenile delinquent and the judge and social worker who attempt to intervene in his chaotic life saw off some hotly tipped competition, including Woody Allen's latest, Irrational Man, and Pixar's big-budget animation Inside Out.

Both of those movies will screen in the festival's out-of-competition section, alongside what is shaping up to be one of the year's biggest blockbusters, Mad Max: Fury Road, the reboot of the cult Aussie post-apocalyptic saga, with Tom Hardy taking over the title role from original star Mel Gibson. The film premiered at Los Angeles' TCL Theatre last Thursday and will have another outing in Cannes this Thursday, the same day it goes on general release in the UAE.

Cannes is about much more than blockbuster Hollywood fare, of course, and the festival's competition sections are traditionally showcases for some of the finest movies from around the world. This year's official selections for the main Palme d'Or competition will be judged by a heavyweight jury that will be led by filmmaking siblings Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo, The Big Lebowski) and also includes the director Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, Mama) and actor Jake Gyllenhall (Donnie Darko and Nightcrawler).

Shortlisted movies include an unusually high total of eight French films and nine English-language movies. Among the shortlisted movies whetting the appetites of cinephiles are Gus van Sant's latest, The Sea of Trees, Taiwanese martial-arts flick The Assassin, and Yorgos Lanthimos's international co-production, The Lobster, a fantasy starring Colin Farrell.

Joachim Trier, who formerly directed skateboarding videos has his latest film, Louder Than Bombs, in competition. He is a distant relative of Lars von Trier, so it will be interesting to see whether hard-hitting, utterly depressing masterpieces run in the family.

The Un Certain Regarde competition jury, which celebrates films with an "original or different" approach, will be chaired by legendary actress Isabella Rossellini. Local interest is piqued here by the presence on the jury of Lebanese actress, director and writer, and 2014 Dubai International Film Festival Muhr Award judge, Nadine Labaki. The shortlist includes the first Ethiopian film to feature in the official Cannes selection, Yared Zeleke's Lamb.

The short-film jury will be chaired by Oscar-nominated Timbuktu director Abderrahmane Sissako, who has become something of an Arabian Gulf regular, having attended both Diff and the Abu Dhabi Film Festival last year, as well as Qumra in Doha in March.

Even if you have little time for world cinema, the festival is sure to offer plenty of opportunities for celeb-spotting, partying and that traditional Cannes favourite, hanging out on yachts with movie stars.

We’re unlikely to have too much time for such distractions, of course, but if you can still find a hotel and have access to a contact with the right connections for tickets, there are surely much worse ways to spend a few pleasant spring days on the French Riviera.