Everybody comes to Cannes

Film professionals, entertainment journalists and movie buffs from the world over, Cannes is where everybody wants to be for 12 days each May. (Text: AP)

India has been making its presence felt on the Croisette for a decade with L'Oreal face Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.

Ash will have plenty of company this year with Mallika Sherawat making her third appearance at Cannes.

Saif Ali Khan will be a fresh face on the red carpet, as representative of the festival's official partner, Chivas Regal.

Karan Johar will be tapping into the international frenzy, and intends to cut a dapper figure in one of his own designs.

Sonam Kapoor, a new face for L'Oreal Paris, will join Ash and the other fashionistas for the ride.

Freida Pinto will represent L'Oreal at the amfAR (The American Foundation for AIDS Research) dinner and after-party on May 19. The event, co-sponsored by the brand, will be a fundraiser for AIDS related campaigns. (Text: IANS)

The 64th edition of Cannes promises to be a prime celebrity-watching zone and a launch pad for films, big and small. Woody Allen's opening-night premiere Midnight in Paris, features Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Adrien Brody, Marion Cotillard and France's first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. (Text: AP)

Day 1 will also see Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas launch their Dreamworks animation and Shrek spinoff, Puss in Boots.

Kung-Fu Panda, another Dreamworks animation starring Angelina Jolie and Jack Black, returns to Cannes with its sequel.

Other highlights include a Saturday night special as Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz turn out for a Cannes screening of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides over the festival's first weekend. (Text: AP)

Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, will also premiere at the film fest. The film is is up for prizes against a field that features films from three past Palme d'Or winners. (Text: AP)

Cannes organizers caught criticism last year for a lackluster lineup, but they have made up for it this time with a promising schedule of 20 films competing for the top prize, the Palme d'Or. Past winners include Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. (Text: AP)

Danish director Lars von Trier, the festival's 2000 winner for Dancer in the Dark, is back with Melancholia, a drama with end-of-the-world overtones starring Kirsten Dunst, Kiefer Sutherland and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who won the best-actress award at Cannes two years ago for von Trier's Antichrist. (Text: AP)

Italian actor-director Nanni Moretti, the 2001 winner for The Son's Room, comes to Cannes again with the papal saga We Have a Pope, in which he co-stars with Michel Piccoli. (Text: AP)

Spain's Pedro Almodovar, an Academy Award winner and frequent Cannes entrant who has won the festival's directing and screenplay prizes but never the Palme d'Or, is in the running again for the genre-bending tale The Skin I Live In, starring Antonio Banderas, who rose to stardom in Almodovar films in the 1980s. (Text: AP)

A key Cannes player both in premiering films and snapping up titles for sale in the festival and the huge Cannes market that runs alongside, Sony Pictures Classics is releasing past Palme d'Or winner Gus Van Sant's drama Restless with Mia Wasikowska and Thursday's opening film for a secondary competition called Un Certain Regard. (Text: AP)

Sean Penn has a second film in the main competition, Italian director Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be the Place. (Text: AP)

The main competition also features Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly in Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin; Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan in Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive; John Goodman in Frenchman Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist; and Emily Browning in Australian director Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty. (Text: AP)

Penelope Cruz - a frequent festival-goer in Almodovar films, Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona and other Cannes entries - is jetting in with the Pirates cast for a quick stopover before continuing on a global tour to promote the movie. She's sorry she'll miss Allen and Almodovar's current Cannes films and will be there just long enough for a taste the festival's carnival atmosphere. (Text: AP)

Director and actress Jodie Foster and Mel Gibson walk the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival premiere of their film The Beaver.

Director Christophe Honore's film The Beloved, starring Catherine Deneuve, will be the last film to be showcased. But the true end of it all will be the revelation of the winner of the festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or.

Actors Uma Thurman and Jude Law are part of the highly reputed eight member jury at the 64th Cannes Film Festival. Hollywood great, Robert De Niro, is on duty as jury head.