The 11th annual Tribeca Film Festival has wrapped itself up with a special presentation of the new restoration of Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy” last night. If I hadn’t been traveling so much the last few weeks, I’d have tried to make it to more events. There was some top-notch programming this year as the festival pivoted toward a new identity.

Friday and today, winners were announced across a wide variety of categories, and the big winner in the narrative jury and audience competitions was Kim Mordaunt’s “The Rocket.” The film also picked up a prize for actor Sitthiphon Disamoe.

Check out the full list of winners below.

Best Narrative Feature
“The Rocket” (Kim Mordaunt)

Audience Award for Best Narrative Film
“The Rocket” (Kim Mordaunt)

Best Actor in a Narrative Feature
Sitthiphon Disamoe, “The Rocket”

Best Actress in a Narrative Feature
Veerle Baetns, “The Broken Circle Breakdown”

Best Screenplay for a Narrative Feature
“The Broken Circle Breakdown” (Carl Joos, Feliz van Groenigen)

Best New Narrative Director
Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais (“Whitewash”)

Best Cinematography in a Narrative Feature
“Before Snowfall” (Marius Matzow Gulbrandsen)

Best Documentary Feature
“The Kill Team” (Dan Krauss)

Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature
“Bridegroom” (Linda Bloodworth)

Best New Documentary Director
Sean Dunne (“Oxyana”)

Best Editing in a Documentary Feature
“Let the Fire Burn” (Nels Bangerter)

Best Narrative Short
“The Nightshift Belongs to the Stars” (Edoardo Ponti)

Best Documentary Short
“Coach” (Bess Kargman)

Student Visionary Award
“Life Doesn’t Frighten Me” (Stephen Dunn)

Bombay Sapphire Award for Transmedia
“Sandy Storyline” (Rachel Falcone, Laura Gottesdiener, Michael Premo)

Tribeca Online Festival Best Feature Film
“Lil Bub & Friendz” (Andy Capper, Juliette Eisner)

Tribeca Online Festival Best Short Film
“A Short Film About Guns” (Minos Papas)

If you’ve been paying attention to HitFix’s on-going 2013 Summer Movie Preview Countdown, you know what the site’s staff is eagerly anticipating as we turn the corner into blockbuster season. High concept entertainment like the comic book stylings of “Iron Man 3,” “Man of Steel” and “The Wolverine” have already been mentioned, as well as other genre fare, from westerns (“The Lone Ranger”) to horror (“The Conjuring”), comedy (“The World’s End”) to sci-fi (“Star Trek Into Darkness”). How will the top five turn out next week? We’ll know soon enough, but in the meantime, we’ve cooked up a list of under-the-radar goodies to check out in between all the big budget fun.

Counter-programming is a time-tested way for studios to bring in audiences amid the usual summer extravaganzas. Indie dramas and smaller efforts can find a foothold, but gems get lost in the fray, too. We thought we would point you to a few worth considering here at In Contention. So click through the gallery below for our tip sheet, and go ahead and let us know what films you’re anticipating this summer in the comments section.

Chasing the American Dream is a theme so pervasive in US cinema – and often beyond – that it scarcely seems like a theme at all: it’s the principle upon which much Hollywood storytelling is built, after all. But few filmmakers have done as much in recent years to redefine and recontextualize the Dream as Ramin Bahrani. North Carolina-born, but of Iranian heritage, Bahrani has a distinct personal perspective on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that has colored all his work to date: the late Roger Ebert, one of his earliest and most loyal champions, has repeatedly described him as the best American director of his generation.

His first three features – “Man Push Cart” (2005), “Chop Shop” (2007) and “Goodbye Solo” (2008) – were all delicate independent explorations of the immigrant experience in the US. For his fourth, however, Bahrani has made a significant stylistic departure to examine the Dream from the inside: powered by two big-name leading men and embracing robust Hollywood melodrama, “At Any Price” is a searching study of the financial, psychological and generational conflicts roiling the serene surface of America’s farming heartland.

“One of the things that interested me about going into the heartland was how different it was from our collective consciousness about it,” says Bahrani. “When I first got out to Iowa, I was thinking how unlike the Terrence Malick vision of that environment – which I love – it had become. There’s something so new about it now: the farmers aren’t simple folk in overalls with a vegetable garden, but highly sophisticated businessmen, navigating and negotiating very complex structures. All of that seemed, compared to my other films, a fresh way to look at the American Dream, this time from within: the characters aren’t immigrants, and they actually have money, yet they’re still under a significant amount of pressure.”

Midwestern masculinity takes a hit, too, in a story that shows long-held patriarchal structures – whereby sons inherit their fathers’ land, businesses and, ultimately, identities – being challenged by internal and external forms of corruption. Our protagonist Henry Whipple (even his name sounds archetypal) is an Iowan commercial farmer who has successfully brought his business into the 21st century through ethical compromise: opportunistically grabbing land from fading rivals and trading in genetically modified seeds. Small wonder his young son Dean has no interesting in inheriting this grubby enterprise, instead fostering ambitions of being a NASCAR racer.

The morally fraught battle for mutual understanding that ensues between these two stubborn, only superficially different men is by no means an exclusively contemporary one: no attempt is made to disguise the influence of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” for example, while Bahrani admits to the influence of great American filmmakers from George Stevens to Robert Altman. The star casting, meanwhile, is particularly canny, as Bahrani picks two all-American heartthrobs to reflect both each other as well as the ideals of their society: as Dean, Zac Efron’s bright-eyed wholesomeness takes on a bitter edge, but it’s Dennis Quaid, as Henry, who carries the film’s chief dramatic burden: a foxy salesman who nonetheless senses his powers of persuasion waning in the face of his son’s contempt, he’s a slicker modern answer to Miller’s Willy Loman.

“Ramin and I talked about Loman from the very beginning,” says Quaid, his typically chipper demeanor ever-so-slightly slowed by tiredness: he’s come off eight weeks of shooting “Vegas” for TV. “Like him, Henry’s a character who has been chasing the American Dream and become corrupted in the process. As a salesman, he has to project a public face of confidence, but because he’s under the rule of a corrupt system, you gradually see the self-loathing beneath. He’s actually quite unlikeable to begin with, and that ambiguity interested me. I don’t think the film has an agenda. Ramin’s films never do: they’re really just out to hold a mirror up to life.”

I mention to Quaid that his portrait of Henry reminded me of another of best performances, as a closeted 1950s family man in Todd Haynes’s “Far From Heaven”: the two characters ostensibly have little in common, but share a kind of weariness with the authoritative masculine role society has dictated they play.

“I thought a lot about that character too,” Bahrani adds. “They’re both so conflicted, and there’s something so physical about the way Dennis projects that conflict – I recognized that on set, but didn’t realize how calculated it all was until I was in the editing room. Then I could see more what he was up to in terms of details like how he held his shoulders, how he clenched his fists, the movements and mannerisms of his face, and when he’d allow cracks in the salesman performance to appear.”

“As a character, he grew more interesting for me the more pressure he was put under,” agrees Quaid. “It’s definitely a generational story: after all, this farm has been passed from father to son for years, and when Henry finds that his son doesn’t want it, that upsets the order of things. And Dean sees his father as a pathetic figure – everything he doesn’t want to be, but already is to some extent.” The older star reserves particular praise for Efron’s performance in defining this conflict: “He’s really excellent here… Zac has all the tools in his toolbox to be a great actor.”

There’s strong supporting work, too, from Red West – the star of Bahrani’s “Goodbye Solo” – as Henry’s own father, who observes his son’s questionable handling of his legacy with stolid skepticism. “You get the sense that the same pressures Henry has felt from his dad all his life are the same ones he’s now setting on his son,” says Bahrani. “In a way, the two characters who are more connected are Dean and his grandfather, who has a kind of respect for his progressive cunning, and sees in him a way for the farm to keep moving forward.”

That, of course, threatens Dean’s own personal ambitions; the film is a complex deconstruction of the American Dream, certainly, but also of individual ones. Bahrani continues: “Dean’s car-racing dream is one of those that’s a good dream when you’re a kid, but ultimately, you find your life moving in a different direction. Not many people end up realizing their childhood dreams.” He pauses. “Well, Dennis and I happen to be lucky exceptions.”

Meanwhile, for Bahrani, the chance to work with a star of Quaid’s standing fulilled an ambition you wouldn’t have guessed the director had fostered from his earlier films. “I knew when I was writing the project that I wanted to push myself creatively in ways I hadn’t done with my previous films,” he says. “I love those films, but I was getting restless and wanted to enlarge my scope: economics, politics, a larger cast of characters in a larger emotional story, a world I hadn’t worked in before. And the first thing I thought was that I needed movie stars to do that.”

It was Quaid’s agent who suggested the star to the director, though Bahrani had been a fan of the star from childhood. “I’d grown up loving Dennis’s films, going all the way back to ‘Breaking Away’ – a deeply American film made by immigrants, funnily enough,” he says. It was seeing Quaid in a more casual context, however, that convinced the director to cast him. “It sounds funny, but the first thing I did once I got off the phone was to Google Dennis, and I ended up watching him on ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show,’ where he was doing a hilarious improvisational comedy routine, saying, ‘I am Dennis Quaid! I am Dennis Quaid!’ And I called his agent back straight away. I rewatched some of his films over the next few days too, but for some reason, that bit made me pretty sure he was the guy.”

Bahrani, meanwhile, is grateful to his producers for letting him “mix things up a bit” in the casting: real-life farmers George Naylor and Troy Roush, introduced to Bahrani by “Food, Inc.” director Michael Pollan, make appearances, while the key role of Dean’s girlfriend was filled by an unknown, Maika Monroe. “Some very famous actresses were interested in the part, and their audition tapes were excellent,” he admits. “But I liked Maika’s freshness.”

Quaid, meanwhile, was attracted by Bahrani’s very ability to work with less seasoned or non-professional actors. “Working with fresh filmmakers like Ramin is what keeps it fresh to me,” he says. “I saw Ramin’s films, which I wasn’t familiar with at the time, and was so impressed: especially ‘Chop Shop,’ with that incredible young boy. I was interested in working with a director who can get that even out of non-actors: there seems to be no acting involved in his films. It feels more like watching a documentary than a movie.”

Not all critics have embraced Bahrani’s merging of his indie sensibility with mainstream stars and structures: the film met with a divided reception at the Venice Film Festival, even prompting some boos at its first press screening. Though he has made some alterations to the film since then – “I trimmed about two minutes from it and took out a few music cues, and really enjoy it more now,” he says – Bahrani claims he was always prepared for the pushback.

“Michael Barker at Sony said to me, ‘There will be so people who are angry you haven’t made the same film again.’ Well, good: I have no interest in doing that. Thank God Visconti didn’t make ‘La Terra Trema’ over and over again, you know? He’d never have made ‘The Leopard.’ If Scorsese had stuck with the ‘Mean Streets’ model, he’d never have reached the heights of ‘GoodFellas.’ I’m not saying I’ve made ‘GoodFellas’ by any stretch of the imagination, but why shouldn’t I strive to do so?”

Bahrani is going smaller again with his next project, an Orlando-based film set around the housing crisis, but is open to further big-name collaborations: after screening the film in Washington, he was tickled by one audience member’s suggestion that he and Quaid do a film navigating the very different corruptive sphere of D.C. Politics. “I really like that idea,” he chuckles. “So if anybody reading this has a great screenplay out there, please send it to us!”

He’s half-joking, but it’s not hard to imagine a killer political thriller in Bahrani’s future, particularly given the layered ambiguity with which “At Any Price” handled its own modern American crisis – a morality tale that bravely dispenses with a clear moral. “All my films have had questions of morality, and of how human beings should behave toward one another, but I like to think none of them have had a moral stamp on them,” he says. “I’d rather they end in question marks than in conclusions or demands.”

Ramin Bahrani’s robust farmland drama “At Any Price” has been splitting the critics since its premiere at last year’s Venice Film Festival, where it was greeted with scattered boos: some admire its command of old-fashioned melodrama, while others find it gauche and contrived. It’s an unfamiliar position for Bahrani, who received pretty universal adoration for his microbudget features “Man Push Cart,” “Chop Shop” and “Goodbye Solo” — the late Roger Ebert, in particular, was a vocal proponent of his work.

Still, Bahrani was always going to run into some criticism when he moved into beefier, more mainstream storytelling with major stars like Zac Efron and Dennis Quaid. I’m a fan of the new direction, and praised the “brashly inquisitive” film in my Venice review, likening it to the work of George Stevens and Nicholas Ray — but I’m curious to know what the director’s acolytes (and, on the other end of the scale, Efron’s devotees) make of this change of pace. Tell us what you think in the comments, and vote in the poll below. Meanwhile, look out for my interview with Bahrani and Quaid tomorrow. 

Yesterday, Kris posted the “teaser” for the teaser of David Gordon Green’s Sundance hit “Prince Avalanche.” Today, we get the actual teaser, which is still doubtless a slip of a thing compared to whatever trailers hit in the near future. Movie marketing — even for the little guys — sure is a peek-a-boo process these days.

Anyway, the one-minute tease is charming enough, understandably selling the film on its loopy comedy rather than its affecting undertow of mourning for an endangered American spirit. The film’s certainly funny enough not to bewilder audiences seeking another “Pineapple Express,” but it represents a more considered integration of Green’s earlier indie melancholy and recent broader comic instincts than the trailer lets on.

As you know, Kris was quite taken with the film at Sundance. I caught up with it a few weeks later in the Berlinale — where it won the Best Director award for Green — and was delighted to find myself in near-complete agreement. I haven’t seen the Norwegian film it’s based on, but the highest compliment I can pay the film is that it nonetheless feels born of Green’s own imagination and preoccupations.

As a study of the case for and against self-reliance, it translates very well to America’s Great Wide Open, and as a simpler, star-driven buddy movie, it benefits from the not-quite-obvious Hollywood pairing of Paul Rudd with Emile Hirsch — who’s never been better, for my money.

The film opens of August 9, so you’ve a while to wait — and acquaint yourself with the fact that any images you see of Hirsch in the film are not of Jack Black in a time machine. In the meantime, enjoy the teaser, and tell us what you think in the comments.

The all-star Competition lineup for next month’s Cannes Film Festival just got a little starrier. And sexier. “Only Lovers Left Alive,” a vampire romance from veteran independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, was one of the more surprising omissions when the Official Selection was unveiled last week: Jarmusch has a long history with Cannes, after all, and the film was widely assumed to be ready in time. What was the problem?

Nothing, as it turns out. Cannes usually adds one or two films to the lineup in the weeks following the initial announcement, and so “Only Lovers Left Alive” is this year’s fashionably late arrival to the Competition, brining the number of Palme d’Or contenders to a nice round 20. And we mean fashionable: with a cast led by Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston, this arthouse addition to the post-“Twilight” vampire craze looks to be one of the festival’s hottest red-carpet attractions.

For Hiddleston, after his star-making stint as Marvel villain Loki in “Thor” and “The Avengers,” this marks a return to his arthouse roots. He replaced Michael Fassbender to take the role of an underground musician and vampire whose relationship with his lover of several centuries (Tilda Swinton) is disrupted by the arrival of her uninhibited younger sister (Mia Wasikowska, fresh from her turn in another offbeat genre effort, “Stoker”). John Hurt, Anton Yelchin and Jeffrey Wright also star.

Jarmusch himself has described the film as a “crypto-vampire love story” — it sounds not altogether unlike Tony Scott’s “The Hunger,” though surely Swinton should be playing the Bowie role. Anyway, alongside Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Only God Forgives,” it promises to give a welcome kick of wild genre energy to the mostly sensible lineup. 

It’s Jarmusch’s first feature since 2009’s challengingly opaque “The Limits of Control,” which also starred Swinton. That film largely skipped the major festival circuit, but the 60-year-old director has been in Competition at Cannes five times before, most recently in 2005 with “Broken Flowers” (which, again, featured Swinton). That wistful romantic comedy (well, Jarmusch’s idea of one, anyway) won the Grand Prix; it’s the closest he’s ever come to the Palme d’Or. Could this be his year to go one better? I’ll examine the film’s chances in more detail when it comes up in our Cannes Check series.

Meanwhile, four films were added to the Official Selection outside Competition. “The Last of the Unjust,” the latest from veteran French documentarian Claude Lanzmann, is a high-profile addition to the out-of-competition slate. 87-year-old Lanzmann made the landmark Holocaust doc “Shoah,” and the new film returns to that subject, studying the relationship between Nazi executioner Adolf Eichmann and Jewish exile Benjamin Murmelstein. Clocking in at nearly four hours — a walk in the park next to “Shoah” — it’ll be one of the festival’s graver attractions.

Three films join the Un Certain Regard strand, bringing the total to 18. One of them I’m particularly pleased to see join the fray, not least since I listed it as one of the 10 films I was most hoping to see at the festival. (That means seven of my picks eventually made it there.) Kurdish auteur Hiner Saleem’s “My Sweet Pepper Land” (formerly titled “Aga”) has been described as Middle Eastern western of sorts, following a newly appointed police chief battling corruption in a post-Saddam democracy. Advance word is positive, even if the whisperings I’d heard about it being a potential Palme d’Or threat weren’t to be.

The other two are both from female directors: acclaimed German shorts director Katrin Gebbe makes her feature debut with “Rising,” while Argentina’s Lucia Puenzo, whose 2007 film “XXY” became an international arthouse hit after bowing in Critics’ Week, moves up the Cannes ladder with her latest, “Wakolda.”

At this point, the disparity in gender balance between Competition and Un Certain Regard cannot pass without comment. 8 of the 18 films in the latter — almost half the lineup — are female-directed, compared to just one of the 20 Competition films. Festival director Thierry Fremaux has said he regards the sections as equal, which doesn’t strike me as entirely convincing; if he really doesn’t see any difference in status between them, however, that’s one hell of a coincidental glass ceiling.

Hmmm. I really don’t know what else I can say about “Mud.” I love the movie. There is no way it won’t land on my top 10 at the end of the year. I’ve been over the moon since I saw it pre-Sundance and I haven’t been too worried about over-hyping it because I think it will find and land comfortably with its audience.

We talked to star Matthew McConaughey. We talked to director Jeff Nichols. Guy had his less-enthusiastic say in Cannes last year and I offered my counter in Park City eight months later. Will we be talking about it at the end of the year, when the awards season takes hold? Time will tell. I certainly hope so. But for now, I’m encouraging all the film lovers I know to check it out this weekend, and that includes you. It’s opening in limited release and I’ll be eager to see how it’s received, so when/if you get around to seeing it, head on back here with your thoughts. And as always, feel free to vote in the poll below with your reaction.

George Clooney is finishing up “The Monuments Men” for release later this year, which he is also producing along with Smoke House partner Grant Heslov. The duo, with Ben Affleck, picked up Oscars for Best Picture in February for “Argo,” and according to The Wrap, Clooney and Heslov are re-teaming with journalist Joshuah Bearman — whose 2007 Wired article spawned the Iran hostage crisis drama — for something called “Coronado High.”

The film, which Sony Pictures is in talks to acquire, will be based on an as-of-yet unpublished article about a group of teenagers used to smuggle drugs in Coronado, a resort community across the bay from San Diego near the Mexican border. But that’s all we have to go on at the moment.

Clooney and Heslov will produce with David Klawans, who is also producing an adaptation of Bearman’s 2010 Wired article “Art of the Steal: On the Trail of World”s Most Ingenious Thief.” No writer has been announced for “Coronado High,” though “Argo” was penned by Chris Terrio. Terrio won a boatload of awards last year, including the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

The Wrap also reports the project is being developed as a potential directing vehicle for Clooney.

When Clooney picked up the Oscar nomination for “Argo” in January, he entered the record books by having earned nominations in six different categories. When he won the prize six weeks later, he joined an elite club of Oscar-winning actors who have also picked up competitive Academy Awards in non-acting categories.

We’ll see if “The Monuments Men” adds to all that kudos glory later this fall, and we’ll certainly keep an eye on “Coronado High” as it develops.

Today marked the start of Sundance London — the second annual mini-festival of highlights from the Sundance Film Festival, transported across the pond and into the cavernous surrounds of the UK capital’s O2 Dome. I’ve been dipping into the press screenings, catching up on a few titles I missed in Park City back in January, and will report back over the weekend. Having missed last year’s inaugural edition, I’m still getting acquainted with this notion of festival as franchise; roving film journalists may not be that jazzed about it, but for civilian film buffs who can’t fly to Park City on a whim, a second-hand programme is precisely the point.

That said, Sundance London does have one or two things its parent festival doesn’t, beginning with an unusual world premiere yesterday. Okay, so it was for a car commercial rather than a movie. But not just any car commercial: “Desire,” produced by Ridley Scott Associates, is a slick 13-minute short film with Emmy-winning “Homeland” star Damian Lewis as its leading man. Well, Lewis and a gleaming Jaguar, since the film’s principal remit, of course, is to make the car look as sexy as possible. Not hard. TV director Adam Smith (“Dr. Who,” “Little Dorrit”) was at the helm, but the Ridley Scott house style is in full effect.

“Desire,” which you can watch in full below, is a glossy, silly distraction that doesn’t invite any thoughts beyond a) Jaguars are nice, and b) Damian Lewis could make a killer James Bond whenever Daniel Craig decides to hang up his tux. Nor should it: it’s an ad, after all.

But I find the placement of a Jaguar promo in the Sundance London lineup symbolically interesting, particularly considering that its press premiere — complete with champagne picnic boxes — took place mere minutes after a press conference where Sundance founder Robert Redford underlined the festival’s budget-conscious independent credentials. Is the world’s foremost indie festival getting a little corporate or, conversely, letting its hair down a bit with some (literally) commercial fluff? And does it matter, if a luxury brand showcase feeds some cash into the noble Sundance stream?

I guess letting Joe Swanberg direct a mumblecore Jag ad wasn’t on the cards. Either way, check out the ad and tell us if you think it belongs on a cinema screen.

Filmmaker Kevin Macdonald is about to go deep sea diving with Jude Law. Deadline reports that the film “Black Sea” has been positioned as his next with Law in the lead as a laid-off submarine captain who gets involved in a scheme to seek out a storied sunken sub that might be loaded with gold in the Black Sea.

I’ve been a pretty big fan of Macdonald’s from the start. He won an Oscar in 2000 for his documentary feature “One Day in September,” which told the story of the 1972 Munich Olympics tragedy six years before Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” came along. His gripping 2003 documentary/narrative hybrid “Touching the Void” was one of my favorite films of that year, and as he transitioned to full-on narrative filmmaking with 2006’s “The Last King of Scotland,” I remained impressed; it, too, was one of the best films of the year, in my opinion, and it won Forest Whitaker an Oscar for Best Actor.

Macdonald has continued to dabble in documentaries, like 2011’s groundbreaking “Life in a Day” (an idea to be revisited with the upcoming “Christmas in a Day”) and with the rather brilliant Bob Marley study “Marley” last year. He has another narrative feature, “How I Live Now,” starring Saoirse Ronan and “The Impossible”‘s Tom Holland, looking for a buyer currently, but Focus Features has already sprung for his next, and it sounds pretty sweet.

The film is to be written by Dennis Kelly, whose musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “Matilda” has been the talk of Broadway. Film 4 developed, co-produced and is co-financing the project with Focus.

It was also announced recently that Focus has acquired the Ron Woodruff biopic “Dallas Buyers Club” for 2013 release.

David Gordon Green’s “Prince Avalanche” is a great departure for the director, getting back to the roots of his feature career in some sense, but in another, it’s a bit of a palette cleanser playing on his various sensibilities as a filmmaker. I kind of fell in love with it at Sundance, and I imagine others might, too.

The film went on to play Berlinale and SXSW and it just played the Tribeca Film Festival here in New York. It’s set for an August 9 release, which will make it a nice palette cleanser of a different sort coming out of the summer movie season as we transition to the fall prestige frame.

Magnolia Pictures picked up the film after Sundance and has released a new teaser trailer, which you can check out below. And if six-second teasers for teaser trailers are your thing, there’s a Vine thingie they released previewing the teaser trailer’s bow tomorrow. I’ve gone ahead and included that as well. You can check out my interview with Green about the film here.

//platform.vine.co/static/scripts/embed.js

(Welcome to Cannes Check, your annual guide through the 19 films in Competition at next month’s Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off on May 15. Taking on a different selection every day, we’ll be examining what they’re about, who’s involved and what their chances are of snagging an award from Steven Spielberg’s jury. We’re going through the list by director and in alphabetical order — next up, Arnaud des Pallières with “Michael Kohlhaas.”)

The director: Arnaud des Pallières (French, 51 years old). As you’d guess from that age, the Paris-born des Pallières is no newcomer: he made his feature debut with “Drancy Avenir” in 1997, and “Michael Kohlhaas” is the third narrative film he’s directed since then. There has also been a feature length documentary, 2011’s “Poussières d’Amérique,” as well as work in shorts and TV. For all his output, however, don’t blame yourself if you hadn’t heard of him prior to last Thursday: his work hasn’t travelled far beyond his home country, and has never been programmed in a major European festival. His most recent narrative feature — 2008’s “Parc,” an adaptation of John Cheever’s “Bullet Park” starring Jean-Marc Barr and Sergi Lopez — was programmed by Toronto and London, but found distribution only in France and Italy. In a Competition lineup with no actual freshmen, des Pallières is one of its wilder cards.

The talent: While des Pallières may not be that well-known, his film is stacked with familiar names — beginning with Danish star Mads Mikkelsen (last year’s Best Actor winner at the fest for “The Hunt”) in the title role. He’s joined by a respectable pan-European ensemble that mixes old hands with fresh faces: Denis Lavant (another of last year’s Cannes sensations in “Holy Motors”), Bruno Ganz (“Downfall”), David Kross (“The Reader”), Sergi Lopez (“Pan’s Labyrinth”), Melusine Mayance (“Sarah’s Key”), Roxane Duran (“The White Ribbon”) and rising French teen star Paul Bartel (not to be confused with the late American actor and filmmaker, obviously).

The screenplay was co-written by des Pallières with first-timer Christelle Berthevas; producer Serge Latou’s most prominent previous credit is “Waltz With Bashir.” Below the line, the most notable name is that of cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie — a favorite of Francois Ozon, she also shot Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi’s Competition title “A Villa in Italy.” And while des Pallières has previously edited his own work, here he’s enlisted the services of Sandie Bompar, previously as assistant editor to Claire Denis and Bruno Dumont.

The pitch: A French-German co-production, “Michael Kohlhaas” is an adaptation of the 1811 novella of the same title by leading German writer Heinrich von Kleist. The book, itself based on true events from the 16th century, has a substantial literary following: Kafka was a vocal admirer, and E.L. Doctorow labelled his novel “Ragtime” (which, in an Anglicised hat-tip, features a character called Coalhouse) a homage to von Kleist’s story. The story, set in what was then the Holy Roman Empire, follows the title character, a Brandenburg horse dealer incensed when two of his animals are illegally confiscated by a government official, as he mounts an active protest against his country’s corrupt bureaucracy — ultimately resorting to acts of terrorism. des Pallières has stayed true to the story’s historical milieu, though contemporary political resonances in the 125-minute, French-language film are said to be intended. 

The pedigree: As discussed above, des Pallières isn’t a name that carries much clout, even in his home country — he has never competed at a major film festival, and I suspect that most critics at the festival (this one included) will be sampling his work for the first time here. Still, the lofty reputation of the film’s source novel, not to mention the current career status of its leading man, ensures a degree of associative prestige.

The buzz: The film was one of the Competition’s more unexpected inclusions, and while it has at this stage generated little audible buzz per se, it does at least have the benefit of our curiosity. When a comparatively little-known name crashes the Competition’s A-list auteur gathering, it either means that Thierry Fremaux and his fellow selectors believe they have something special on their hands — or that complex programming politics are at play. We’ll see.  

The odds: Until we actually see it, “Michael Kohlhaas” has to be regarded as a long shot for the Palme d’Or — which has in recent years been very much the preserve of star auteurs. Critic and betting expert Neil Young puts the film in the back half of the pack with odds of 22-1, which sounds right for now, though that’s not to say the film couldn’t be a surprise hit. Jury president Steven Spielberg might well be sympathetic to a well-executed historical epic. Meanwhile, with a meaty role to chew on here, Mikkelsen stands a chance at becoming the first actor since Barbara Hershey 25 years ago to win back-to-back awards at the festival.

The premiere date: Friday, May 24.

Check back in tomorrow, when we’ll be sizing up a similarly-named but better-known Arnaud — Desplechin — with “Jimmy P.”

(Welcome to Cannes Check, your annual guide through the 19 films in Competition at next month’s Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off on May 15. Taking on a different selection every day, we’ll be examining what they’re about, who’s involved and what their chances are of snagging an award from Steven Spielberg’s jury. We’re going through the list by director and in alphabetical order — next up, Joel and Ethan Coen with “Inside Llewyn Davis.”)

The directors: Joel Coen (American, 58 years old) and Ethan Coen (55 years old). You may have heard of them. Cinema’s most famous fraternal filmmaking duo have made 16 features in 29 years, though only started billing themselves as co-directors with 2004’s “The Ladykillers.” Joel previously took the directing credit, Ethan the producing one, though their roles have never been separable — they also write and edit their own work. Indie darlings from the get-go, they’ve successfully moved further into the mainstream whilst maintaining their auteur cachet: their last film, the 2010 period western “True Grit,” received 10 Oscar nominations and, with over $170 million domestically, was by far the highest grosser of their career. Their most recent credit, however, is something of an anomaly on their CV: the screenplay for flop comedy remake “Gambit,” in which they had no directorial involvement.

The talent: The Coens have recently had a habit of mixing A-list stars with veterans and up-and-comers alike, and so it is with “Inside Llewyn Davis.”  33 year-old, Guatemalan-born actor Oscar Isaac turned a few heads in “Drive,” endured the embarrassment of “W.E.,” and here gets his first big shot at leading-man status. Carey Mulligan, Isaac’s onscreen wife in “Drive,” is cast as his apparent love interest; between this and Cannes opener “The Great Gatsby,” she’s set to be one of the faces of the festival. Justin Timberlake and Garrett Hedlund — last seen topping the charts and stealing “On the Road,” respectively — fill out an unusually large young-and-beautiful contingent for a Coen Brothers joint. Oscar-winning character actor F. Murray Abraham is also on board, as is the resurgent John Goodman — a former Coens regular making his first film with the brothers since 2000’s “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

Behind the camera, the brothers are on their usual directing-writing-producing-editing duty, editing under their regular pseudonym of Roderick Jaynes and producing with Scott Rudin, who also teamed up with them on “No Country for Old Men” and “True Grit.” Their regular production designer Jess Gonchor and costume designer Mary Zophres are providing the 1960s trimmings, though their favorite cinematographer, Roger Deakins, is sitting this one out. Don’t despair, however: three-time Oscar nominee Bruno Delbonnel (“Amelie,” “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”) is evidently keeping things pretty with his trademark verdigris finish. Perhaps most crucially, given the nature of the story, the music is being handled by rootsy super-producer T Bone Burnett (who made the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack a crossover phenomenon), in collaboration with Grammy-winning Mumford & Sons frontman Marcus Mumford (aka Mr. Carey Mulligan).

The pitch: Yet another period piece for the Coens, as they turn to a different end of the decade they explored so evocatively in 2009’s “A Serious Man.” Set over a two-week period in 1961, “Inside Llewyn Davis” examines New York City’s burgeoning folk-rock scene of the time, and is a reportedly loose adaptation of folk musician Dave Van Ronk’s memoir “The Mayor of MacDougal Street.” Following the personal and professional travails of aspiring Dylan-esque singer-songwriter Llewyn Davis (Isaac) as he tries to gain traction on the scene, the film is — according to Ethan Coen, at least — less plot-driven than usual for the brothers. There’s a strong emphasis on full-length musical performances, with Isaac, Mulligan and (of course) Timberlake all showing off their singing chops. Shot with no distributor attached (CBS Films has since taken it on), the film promises a return to small-scale niche fare after the unexpected blockbuster success of “True Grit.”

The pedigree: Formidable. Long before the Coens morphed into consensus Great American Filmmakers, bedecked with Oscars and box office glory, Cannes had latched onto their odd genius. In 1987, they made their Cannes debut out of competition with their second film, “Raising Arizona”; since then, they’ve competed for the Palme d’Or eight times. “Barton Fink” won them the big prize on their very first attempt in 1991, also earning the elder Coen Best Director honors. He has since won the latter award twice more, for “Fargo” (1996) and “The Man Who Wasn’t There” (2001), making him the only three-time winner in the category. Away from the festival beat, of course, there have been four Oscars, including Best Picture for “No Country for Old Men” — which happens to be the last film they took to Cannes. 

The buzz: For some time, the film was unusually off-the-radar for a Coen Brothers project, which probably had much to do with its distributor-free production — it was financed by French company StudioCanal. The New York Times reported that the film could have been ready in time for an Oscar run last year; instead, the Coens chose to edit it “at their own pace” and hang on for a Cannes berth, which suggests quiet confidence in a film hardly expected to match the crossover success of much of their recent work. Whispers from early screenings suggest a low-key charmer, while the first trailer, which hit the web a couple of months ago, is rather beguiling. The softly-softly approach may well pay off with this one — and even if it doesn’t, expect the soundtrack to be a wow.

The odds: With one Palme d’Or and three Best Director awards to their name, the Coens have been so frequently honored at the festival that they may well have entered Hall of Fame status: Cannes will keep inviting them back, but there’s no urgent need to reward them. Stephen Frears, jury president in 2007, implied as much when explaining why future Oscar champ “No Country for Old Men” won nothing from them, saying they knew the film was going to do well elsewhere without any help from them. With the film not seeming to break significant new ground for the pair, something tells me Spielberg’s crew might feel the same way; Cannes oddsmaker Neil Young agrees, pegging it at 22-1 for the Palme.

The premiere date: Sunday, May 19.

Check back in tomorrow, when we’ll be sizing up Arnaud des Pallières’s “Michael Kohlhaas.”

The Cannes Film Festival waited a long time to secure Steven Spielberg as their Competition jury president, so now that they”ve finally got him, they weren”t going to give him just any motley crew of jurors to work with. The panel of eight film luminaries announced this morning is the most high-profile in recent memory, containing as it does one former Palme d”Or winner, one two-time Oscar-winning director, one two-time Oscar-winning actor, one Oscar-winning actress and two former Cannes Best Actor winners.

In 2009, Ang Lee was the president of the Venice Film Festival jury – and he”d doubtless make a worthy Cannes president too. Yet such is the star quality of this collective that simple juror status doesn”t seem a slight. And hey, only two months ago, he beat President Spielberg to the Best Director Oscar, so it all evens out. Still, neither man has a Palme d”Or to their name, so Romanian New Wave leader Cristian Mungiu can pull rank on them in that respect: he won the top prize for “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” in 2007, and took Best Screenplay at last year”s fest for “Beyond the Hills.”

Spielberg and Lee aren”t the only jury members who can swap memories of the awards season just past. Reigning Best Supporting Actor winner Christoph Waltz – whose career was transformed at the festival four years ago, when he won Best Actor for “Inglourious Basterds” – is on board too. 17 years ago, French star Daniel Auteil won the same award for “The Eighth Day”: with memorable roles in such films as “Hidden” and “Jean de Florette” to his credit, he remains one of the biggest names in French cinema.

And that”s just the men. Festival director Thierry Fremaux may have shown a bit of a blind spot recently when it comes to picking women for the Competition lineup, but he and his colleagues have shown exemplary taste in female jury members this year – for starters, there are more female filmmakers on the jury than there are in Competition.

The “star slot,” meanwhile, is filled in exciting fashion by Nicole Kidman, arguably the most risk-taking Hollywood actress of her generation. Kidman has been to Cannes with several Competition films in the past, including “Dogville,” “Moulin Rouge!” and last year”s “The Paperboy,” but has never served on the jury before; given her history of auteur partnerships, this seems an overdue honor.

Perhaps Kidman can fix some future collaborations while she”s on the jury; I for one, would love to see her get cosy with Lynne Ramsay, whose inclusion is perhaps the most unexpected and exciting of the lot. The gifted Scottish director, who competed for the Palme d”Or two years ago with “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” likely wouldn”t have been available for jury duty if she hadn”t left the set of “Jane Got a Gun” in mysterious, headline-making circumstances last month. Never let it be said that Thierry Fremaux isn”t an opportunist.

Even the least broadly familiar names on the jury are no slouches. Japanese director Naomi Kawase was a surprise winner of the Grand Prix in 2007 for her avant-garde film “The Mourning Forest” — coincidentally, she was runner-up to Mungiu — and has been in Competition since. Actress Vidya Balan, meanwhile, is a major Bollywood star, whose inclusion is a nice nod to the festival”s celebration of Indian cinema this year.

We can’t speculate as to whether Spielberg will lend a mainstream tilt to the jury’s choices or zag in the opposite direction — but taking the reputations of Kidman, Kawase and Ramsay into account, it might well be the women who bring the danger. I’m excited to see where this group lands.    

The Cannes Competition jury for 2013 is: 

Daniel Auteuil

Vidya Balan

Naomi Kawase

Nicole Kidman

Ang Lee

Cristian Mungiu

Lynne Ramsay

Steven Spielberg (president)

Christoph Waltz

With today’s announcement of the Directors’ Fortnight lineup, the slate for next month’s Cannes Film Festival is officially complete. (Bar any stray late additions, of which there are usually a couple.) And the Fortnight programmers haven’t made it any easier to plan one’s viewing in an already stacked festival, serving up a selection rich in unexpected names and welcome genre diversions.

The Fortnight had already got off to a high-profile start with the announcement of Ari Folman’s “The Congress” as its opening film, but the name director who looks set to dominate the sidebar is 84-year-old Chilean cult favorite Alejandro Jodorowsky.

The singular artist behind such classic provocations as “El Topo” and “The Holy Mountain” hasn’t made a film in 23 years, but he’s making up for lost time here: in addition to the world premiere of his new autobiographical film “The Dance of Reality,” the Fortnight will also feature Frank Pavich’s “Jodorowsky’s Dune,” a documentary on the director’s failed attempt to film Frank Herbert’s landmark sci-fi novel “Dune.” (David Lynch eventually got the gig, and struggled mightily with it.) 

“The Dance of Reality,” based on Jodorowsky’s published memoirs of his childhood in Chile, stars the director’s son Aden as his younger self; billed as a departure for Jodorwsky, it nonetheless sounds appropriate surrealistic. “Jodorowsky’s Dune,” meanwhile, will have many cinephiles and sci-fi buffs intrigued with a glimpse of what might have been — Hitfix’s own Drew McWeeny, by the way, is among the film’s interviewees. 

Two Sundance titles crack the lineup, joining “Fruitvale Station” in Un Certain Regard and “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” in Critics’ Week as this year’s chosen Park City carry-overs. The first is “Magic Magic,” from another Chilean filmmaker, Sebastan Silva, and starring Michael Cera; the film didn’t get as much attention at Sundance as “Crystal Fairy,” Silva and Cera’s other, near-simultaneous collaboration, though reviews for the psychological thriller were generally better.

The other Sundance inclusion is a rare festival nod to outright horror: Jim Mickle’s “We Are What We Are,” a genuinely inspired remake of the Mexican cannibal-family hit that itself premiered in Directors’ Fortnight in 2010. That’s a nice bit of continuity, though Mickle’s smart, grisly reworking earns a place on its own merits. (I reviewed the film for Variety here, while Drew was similarly impressed.) 

It’s refreshing to see one strand of the festival embracing genre film so openly: also selected is the Kickstarter-funded US revenge thriller “Blue Ruin,” directed by Jeremy Saulnier, and Ruairi Robinson’s “Last Days on Mars,” a sci-fi horror film starring Liev Schreiber and Romola Garai that is also one of the few British films in the fest.

Indeed, considering the UK is nowhere to be seen in the Official Selection, they’ve done pretty well at the Fortnight: also premiering is “The Selfish Giant,” Clio Barnard’s follow-up to her much-garlanded documentary-fiction hybrid “The Arbor.” And yes, in case the title has you wondering, it is a modern-day adaptation of the famed Oscar Wilde fable of the same name. Cannes festival director Thierry Fremaux has referred in interviews to one British film he wanted to program in the Official Selection, but lost to the Fortnight — I suspect this is the one.

Finally, Lynne Ramsay’s exquisite, BAFTA-winning short film “Swimmer” will be making its international premiere in this section — which should be a timely reminder of her talent to those who have been distracted by the “Jane Got a Gun” fracas. 

The 22 feature films in Directors’ Fortnight are: 

“A Strange Course of Events,” Raphaël Nadjari
“Les Apaches,” Thierry de Peretti
“Ate ver a luz,” Basil Da Cunha
“Blue Ruin,” Jeremy Saulnier
“The Congress,” Ari Folman (opening film)
“The Dance of Reality,” Alejandro Jodorowsky
“L”Escale,” Kaveh Bakhtiari
“La Fille du 14 Juillet,” Antonin Peretjatko
“Henri,” Yolande Moreau
“Ilo Ilo,” Anthony Chen
“Jodorowsky”s Dune,” Frank Pavich
“Last Days on Mars,” Ruairi Robinson
“Les Garçons et Guillaume, à table !,” Guillaume Gallienne
“Magic Magic,” Sebastian Silva “
On the Job,” Erik Matti
“The Selfish Giant,” Clio Barnard
“Tip Top,” Serge Bozon
“Ugly,” Anurag Kashyap
“Un voyageur,” Marcel Ophuls
“El verano de los peces voladores,” Marcela Said
“We Are What We Are,” Jim Mickle

When actor Matthew McConaughey was doing the awards circuit press rounds last year for his Independent Spirit Award-winning work in “Magic Mike,” he was strikingly thin. The reason for the physical transformation was his role in Jean-Marc Vallée’s upcoming “Dallas Buyers Club,” which has just found a home at Focus Features.

The film was acquired for domestic release in the second half of 2013, though no firm date has been set yet. McConaughey stars as real-life Texas electrician Ron Woodruff, whose story is fascinating. In 1986 he was blindsided by an HIV diagnosis and given 30 days to live. The government, meanwhile, was gridlocked over medical response to the growing epidemic, leaving Woodruff to seek alternative treatments from around the world, sometimes illegally. Soon enough he set up a “buyers club” that afforded fellow sufferers access to his supplies.

The transformation alone is sure to get McConaughey in the awards discussion, as that kind of dedication to a role almost always does. (Of course, Jared Leto will be right there along with him on that score.) But this being a part of a huge wave for the actor this year — along with Jeff Nichols’ “Mud” and Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” — could make for a rich narrative. Of course, we’ve been saying that for a while around these parts.

To that end, blurbed Focus brass James Schamus and Andrew Karpen in the press release: “Matthew McConaughey is an actor at the top of his game, and he incarnates Ron Woodruff by showing how his self-interest was galvanized into something much more. Audiences will want to take this journey with him.”

We all knew Focus would probably have to go shopping as the distributor’s latter-year line-up wasn’t as full from afar as it’s been in the past. April release “The Place Beyond the Pines” is a film with passionate fans and that could help it insinuate itself into some of the discussion in the fall, but that’s about it. Comedies like “Admission” and “The World’s End” won’t cut it for awards. I’m interested in John Crowley’s “Closed Circuit” mainly due to writer Steven Knight and Atom Egoyan’s latest, “Seven Wonders,” is also unknowable at the moment.

Last year Focus came into the season with a handful of possibilities, from “Anna Karenina” to “Hyde Park on Hudson” to the animated “ParaNorman.” Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom” ended up being the best bet, but that reality might have dawned a bit late. “Dallas Buyers Club,” though, is a good start this year.

Meanwhile, “Mud,” featuring perhaps McConaughey’s greatest performance (so far), hits theaters this Friday. You should see it.

Welcome to Cannes Check, your annual guide through the 19 films in Competition at next month’s Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off on May 15. Taking on a different selection every day, we’ll be examining what they’re about, who’s involved and what their chances are of snagging an award from Steven Spielberg’s jury. We’re going through the list by director and in alphabetical order — meaning actress-turned-director Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi is first up with “A Villa in Italy.” 

The director: Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi (Italian-French, 48 years old). Though perhaps better known as an actress in such films “Munich” and “5×2,” she has directed two previous features, “It’s Easier For a Camel…” (2003) and “Actresses” (2007). She is the only female filmmaker in Competition. (Fun fact: She’s the older sister of singer-actress and former French first lady  Carla Bruni.)

The talent: As in her first two films behind the  camera, Bruni-Tedeschi takes a substantial role in this one, and co-wrote the screenplay with fellow actress-turned-filmmaker Noémie Lvovsky and Agnès de Sacy. Indeed, the film is an all-round showcase for female off-screen talent, including cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie (best known for her previous work with Francois Ozon, and also the DP on fellow Competition title “Michael Kohlhaas”), editors Laure Gardette (“In the House,” “Polisse”) and Francesca Calvelli (“No Man’s Land”) and production designer Emmanuelle Duplay. In additional to the director herself, the cast features a number of well-known European faces, including Louis Garrel (a favourite of Christophe Honoré, also Bruni-Tedeschi’s real-life partner), Andre Wilms (“Le Havre”), Filippo Timi (“Vincere”) and another name with experience on both sides of the camera, Xavier Beauvois — who won the Grand Jury Prize three years ago, for “Of Gods and Men.” Producer Saïd Ben Saïd’s recent credits include Roman Polanski’s “Carnage” and Brian De Palma’s “Passion.”

The pitch: One of six French productions in Competition, Bruni-Tedeschi’s film is, as the title implies, set in Italy, and looks to be an ensemble family saga in the vein of “I Am Love” — centering on a large clan from the Italian industrial bourgeoisie. The official synopsis (roughly translated) doesn’t give much away: A woman meets a man who revives her dreams, while her story is braided with that of her mother and her ill brother. As romance blooms, this crumbling family faces the end of an era. I would presume that Bruni-Tedeschi and Garrel play the romantic leads. Sounds fairly classical and, at 104 minutes, not entirely epic in scope. Though Italian-set, the film’s dialogue is in French.  

The pedigree: If there was only going to be one female director in Competition this year, most would have bet on it being Claire Denis (relegated to Un Certain Regard) or Catherine Breillat (nowhere in sight); instead, it was the less seasoned Bruni-Tedeschi who got the nod. Not that she’s some kind of rube in the lineup: her directorial debut “It’s Easier For a Camel…” won France’s most prestigious film award, the Louis Delluc, for Best First Film. She made her Cannes debut with her 2007 follow-up, “Actresses”: programmed in Un Certain Regard, where it won a Special Jury Prize. (Of course, she also has years of experiencing attending the festival with films as an actress only.) A Competition berth feels like a natural progression for her at this stage.

The buzz: It’s unfortunate and unfair that Bruni-Tedeschi is going to be labelled a token inclusion in some quarters: festival director Thierry Fremaux attempted to pre-empt such talk in an interview by stating, “I don”t select films because they are directed by women … We put it in because we thought it was a good film.” Still, “A Villa in Italy” will probably be subjected to more scrutiny than it would be otherwise — no critical word on the film has emerged yet, but Bruni-Tedeschi’s reputation gives us little reason to be suspicious.

The odds: Cannes betting expert Neil Young currently has the film in second-last place in the Palme d’Or rankings, with odds of 50-1 — and indeed, it would be surprising to see Bruni-Tedeschi become only the second woman in history (after Jane Campion) to lift the trophy. Still, that’s not to say she’s unlikely to win any award at all if the film delivers: we don’t yet know the makeup of Steven Spielberg’s jury, but Bruni-Tedeschi might well have a sympathetic faction within it. It’s also worth noting that Cannes juries can be kind to directors who also appear on screen in their films: Tommy Lee Jones won Best Actor for “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” a ew years back, and Mathieu Amalric Best Director for “On Tour.” Something along the lines of a Jury Prize would not surprise me for the only female filmmaker to compete for the Palme in two years. 

The premiere date: Monday, May 20.

Check back in tomorrow, when we’ll be sizing up Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Inside Llewyn Davis.”

The slate for next month’s Cannes Film Festival is just about complete: the Official Selection was announced on Thursday, Ari Folman’s “The Congress” was announced as the opening film for the Directors’ Fortnight section on Friday, and the rest of the fortnight lineup will be revealed tomorrow. Today, meanwhile, came the announcement of the films selected for the Critics’ Week sidebar — a parallel independent strand focusing on new filmmakers.

Due to that very focus, of course, the lineup tends to remain something of a closed book even after it’s revealed: more than any other section in Cannes, this is the place for on-the-ground discovery. One film from this year’s Critics’ Week selection, however, is already a known quantity to us: David Lowery’s “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” one of the biggest critical hits of the Sundance fest in January, is the section’s only American film.

The distinctly Malick-esque “Saints,” a romantic crime drama starring Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, always seemed likely to show up somewhere in Cannes: I had it pegged alongside Grand Jury Prize winner “Fruitvale Station” as one of the films most likely to nab the “Sundance slot” in Un Certain Regard. “Fruitvale Station” duly got it, so it’s no surprise now to see Lowery’s film in Critics’ Week, which has been kind in the past to Sundance successes: “Take Shelter” won the section’s top prize two years ago.

“Saints” will not, however, be in the running for the award, screening instead in a non-competitive Special Screening slot — Critics’ Week director Charles Tesson says this is to give the film a more generous spotlight, though it’s likely because the film doesn’t fit their usual remit of debut or sophomore features. (It’s Lowery’s third film.) 

Either way, it lends a significant extra shot of prestige to a film  that will be looking to capitalize on the critical raves when it hits theaters later this summer; a prizewinner at Sundance for Bradford Young’s remarkable cinematography, it could well rack up further accolades. In my own review out of Sundance, I described it as an “imposing” and “grimly graceful” effort, and mine was one of the more reserved endorsements.

The opening film of Critics’ Week, meanwhile, is also an out-of-competition selection: “Suzanne,” the second feature by female French director Katell Quillévéré, whose debut, the disquieting coming-of-age story “Love Like Poison,” I named one of 2010’s best films. The new film, a family drama about the relationship between two young women and their widowed father, now rockets up my Cannes must-see list. (Rounding out the Special Screenings is Yann Gonzalez’s “Meeting After Midnight.”) 

Of the seven films in competition, meanwhile, five are debuts: Agustin Toscano and Ezquiel Raduski’s “Los duenos,” from Argentina; Ritesh Batra’s “Lunchbox,” from India; David Perrault’s “Our Cities Are Dead This Evening,” from France; Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza’s “Salvo,” from Italy; and Paul Wright’s “or Those In Peril,” from the UK. (The last of these is the only British film to have shown up in a Cannes lineup so far, though I’m expecting one in Directors’ Fortnight tomorrow.)

The sophomore selections, meanwhile, are Yury Bykov’s “The Major,” from Russia, and Sebastien Pilote’s “Le Demantelement,” from France. Portuguese director Miguel Gomes — who happened to direct my favorite ilm of 2012, “Tabu,” is an inspired choice to head the feature film jury; French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Love will preside over the shorts. The closing film has yet to be announced.

If you’re wondering what kind of future majors might be in these ranks, remember that these are just of the films to have emerged from Critics’ Week (now in its 52nd year) this century alone: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarittu’s “Amores Perros,” Justin Kurzel’s “The Snowtown Murders,” Miranda July’s “Me and You and Everyone We Know” and Lucia Puenzo’s “XXY.”