Slew of auteurs and award-winners for reborn Cannes

A rich crop of past Palme d’Or winners and arthouse favourites are set to return to the Cannes Film Festival in July as organisers announced a bumper selection for its competition on Thursday.
Among the 24 directors whose films are heading to the Cote d’Azur for July 6-17 are Sean Penn for his new film Flag Day, Italy’s Nanni Moretti (winner in 2001) with Tre Piani and France’s Jacques Audiard (winner in 2015) with Les Oympiades. 
They join three big auteurs that had already been announced: Wes Anderson (The French Dispatch), Paul Verhoeven (Benedetta) and Leos Carax (Annette).

One silver lining from all the disruption of the past year has been a backlog of cinematic gold that gave organisers some 2,000 films to wade through as they made their selection for the 74th edition of the world’s leading film shindig.
Another past Palme winner returning to the Croisette is Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul with his first English-language film Memoria, starring Tilda Swinton. 
Iran’s two-time Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi will also return with A Hero, while Russia’s renowned director Kirill  Serebrennikov − who has lately faced significant pressure from authorities − will be in...