Ten films we can’t wait to see at the Cannes Film Festival 2016

Director Jeff Nichols

His well-liked sci-fi ‘Midnight Special’ is still in cinemas, but American filmmaker Jeff Nichols has already finished another film. ‘Loving’ is a drama about an interracial couple who are imprisoned in 1950s Virginia for getting married. Australian actor Joel Edgerton stars as the husband, Richard Loving, while Ethiopian-Irish actress Ruth Negga plays the wife, Mildred.

Director Bruno Dumont

French filmmaker Bruno Dumont’s new film gives us an enticing cast and an eye-grabbing premise. Fabrice Luchini, Juliette Binoche and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi star as members of a wealthy family living in a coastal house in northern France near a spot where tourists keep disappearing. Another, lesser-born family of ferrymen also catches the eye of police investigating the disappearances. Consider us intrigued.

Director Xavier Dolan

It’s still hard to talk about Xavier Dolan without mentioning his age: this is his sixth feature film and the French-Canadian filmmaker is still only 27. His latest film is an adaptation of a 1990 play by the late French playwright Jean-Luc Lagarce, and the starry cast includes Léa Seydoux, Marion Cotillard and Vincent Cassel. The plot involves a writer who returns to his hometown to announce his imminent death to his family.

Director Paul Verhoeven

Dutch director Paul Verhoeven’s career has been relatively quiet of late – this is the man who made ‘RoboCop’, ‘Total Recall’, ‘Basic Instinct’, ‘Showgirls’ and ‘Starship Troopers’ in a busy ten-year period from 1987. ‘Elle’ stars French actress Isabelle Huppert as a tough-minded businesswoman who decides to track down a stranger who attacked her in her own home – leading to a dangerous game being played out between the two of them.

Director Park Chan-wook

Best known for ‘Oldboy’ and more recently ‘Stoker’, Korean director Park Chan-wook’s new film is inspired by Sarah Waters’s Victorian-set lesbian crime novel ‘Fingersmith’. It tells of a love story between a woman and her maid, and the filmmaker has moved the action to 1930s Korea, a period of Japanese occupation.