Tarantino, Loach and Lee vy for Cannes Palme d’Or

A heavyweight line-up of directors will be vying for the Palme d'Or at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival in May. It was announced today that Quentin Tarantino, Pedro Almodovar, Ang Lee, Ken Loach, Jane Campion and Michael Haneke will be among the 20 directors competing for the festival's top prize.

The only American director in the field, Tarantino's Second World War saga Inglourious Basterds, starring Brad Pitt (above), will be up against Loach's Looking for Eric, starring French footballer Eric Cantona. It is the ninth time the British director has been shortlisted for the Palm d'Or.

The prolific Taiwanese director Ang Lee has been shortlisted for his comedy Taking Woodstock, about the iconic 1969 music festival while Spanish director Almodovar is showing his new thriller, Broken Embraces, starring Penelope Cruz.

Former Palm d'Or winner Jane Campion is also in competition for Bright Star, her film on romantic poet John Keats, which stars British actor Ben Whishaw. Meanwhile Austria's Michael Haneke presents his exploration of facism in early 20th-century Germany, The White Ribbon.

One of the films screening out of competition at Cannes is Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - the film Heath Ledger was working on at the time of his death in January 2008.

French actress Isabelle Huppert heads the jury for the 62nd festival, which runs from May 13 to 24.