2015 Cannes Film Festival Opens with Emmanuelle Bercot’s La Tete Haute

The 68^th annual Cannes Film Festival is getting under way in the south of France.

This year’s festival is being held from May 13 to 24.

Michael Fassbender and Natalie Portman are among the notables due to attend.

Other stars, among them Cate Blanchett and Matthew McConaughey, are expected to appear during the 12-day event.

Sienna Miller and Jake Gyllenhaal will sit on a competition jury headed by sibling duo Joel and Ethan Coen.

Cannes Film Festival officially kicks off later with a gala screening of French drama La Tete Haute (Standing Tall).

France is well-represented in the race for the festival’s top prize, making up five of the 19 Palme d’Or entries.

Yet this year’s line-up has been criticized for including a number of films by European film-makers that feature both Hollywood stars and English-language dialogue.

They include Youth, from Italy’s Paolo Sorrentino, which stars Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel as old friends vacationing in the Alps.

Another contentious title is The Lobster, from Greece’s Yorgos Lanthimos, which was shot in Dublin and has a cast headed by Colin Farrell.

A more welcomed development this year is the festival’s perceived championing of female film-makers.

La Tete Haute director Emmanuelle Bercot is only the second woman to win the coveted opening night slot since the festival began in 1946.

Director Agnes Varda, who made her name during the French New Wave of the 1960s, will become the first woman to receive an honorary Palme d’Or.

Natalie Portman, meanwhile, is presenting a special screening of her feature directorial debut, A Tale of Love and Darkness, about the early years of Israel.

Hotly anticipated titles this year include a new film version of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, starring Michael Fassbender in the title role.

Also included in the competition line-up is Todd Haynes’ Carol, in which Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara play lovers in 1950s New York.

Films screening out of competition include Woody Allen’s latest, Irrational Man, and Amy, a documentary about Amy Winehouse that has been called “misleading” by the late singer’s father.

Mad Max: Fury Road will also have a special screening on May 14, the same day the latest installment in the apocalyptic action series opens in cinemas.