2011 Cannes lineup announced!

A bunch of exciting, controversial and most-likely confounding feature films will compete for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year.

The competition lineup was announced yesterday, confirming rumours that Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life and Lars von Trier’s Melancholia would make their debut on The Croisette.

Other big names debuting their new films at the fest include Takeshi Miike, Nicolas Winding Refn and Pedro Almodovar. Four female directors are competing for the top prize, the most in the festival’s history, and a vast improvement over last year’s selection, which was, as the French say, “a sausage fest”.

Australian novelist Julia Leigh’s feature film debut Sleeping Beauty will also compete for the Palme d’Or, the first Australian film to do so in a decade. Fellow Aussie Iven Sen‘s Toomelah will feature in the Un Certain Regard competition opposite the newie from Gus Van Sant and Sundance favourite Martha Marcy May Marlene.

Check out the lineup below!

Opening Film
Midnight in Paris, dir. Woody Allen

Competition
Drive, dir. Nicolas Winding Refn
Footnote, dir. Josef Cedar
Hanezu no Tsuki, dir. Naomi Kawase
Hara-kiri: Death of a Samurai, dir. Takashi Miike
The Kid With a Bike, dir. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
L’apollonide (Souvenirs de la maison close), dir. Bertrand Bonello
Le Havre, dir. Aki Kaurismaki
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Melancholia, dir. Lars von Trier
Michael, dir. Markus Schleinzer
Pater, dir. Alain Cavalier
Polisse, dir. Maiwenn
The Skin I Live In, dir. Pedro Almodovar
Sleeping Beauty, dir. Julia Leigh
La Source des femmes, dir. Radu Mihaileanu
This Must Be the Place, dir. Paolo Sorrentino
The Tree of Life, dir. Terrence Malick
We Have a Pope, dir. Nanni Moretti
We Need to Talk About Kevin, dir. Lynne Ramsay

Un Certain Regard
Arirang, dir. Kim Ki-duk
Bonsai, dir. Cristian Jimenez
The Day He Arrives, dir. Hong Sang-soo
Et maintenant on va ou?, dir. Nadine Labaki
Halt auf freier Strecke, dir. Andreas Dresen
Hors Satan, dir. Bruno Dumont
The Hunter, dir. Bakur Bakuradze
Les Neiges du Kilimandjaro, dir. Robert Guediguian
L’exercisce de l’etat, dir. Pierre Schoeller
Loverboy, dir. Catalin Mitulescu
Martha Marcy May Marlene, dir. Sean Durkin
Miss Bala, dir. Gerardo Naranjo
Restless, dir. U.S., Gus Van Sant
Oslo, August 31st, dir. Joachim Trier
Skoonheid, dir. Oliver Hermanus
Tatsumi, dir. Eric Khoo
Trabalhar cansa, dir. Juliana Rojas, Marco Dutra
Roomelah, dir. Ivan Sen
The Yellow Sea, dir. Na Hong-jin

Out of Competition
The Beaver, dir. Jodie Foster
The Artist, dir. Michel Hazanavicius
The Conquest, dir. Xavier Durringer
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, dir. Rob Marshall

Midnight Screenings
Wu Xia, dir. Peter Chan Ho-sun
Dias de gracia, dir. Everardo Gout

Special Screenings
Labrador, dir. Frederikke Aspock
Le maitre des forges de l’enfer, dir. Rithy Panh
Michel Petrucciani, dir. Michael Radford
Tous au Larzac, dir. Christian Rouaud

Discuss: Any of these tickle your fancy?