Cannes 2010: the directors in competition this year

He has been a Bond villain (in Quantum of Solace), a paralysed dreamer (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) and a shadowy HR psychologist (Heartbeat Detector). For his next trick, César award-winning actor Mathieu Amalric turns Palme d'Or contender. His comedy feature Tournée spotlights the travails of a US burlesque team abroad in France
Photograph: PR

French film-maker Xavier Beauvois won the Cannes jury prize back in 1995. His latest drama, Of Gods and Men, spotlights the fate of the 'Matryrs of Atlas', a group of seven Trappist monks killed in mysterious circumstances in 1990s Algeria
Photograph: Luc Skeudener/EPA

The Algerian theme continues with Hors La Loi (Outside the Law), Rachid Bouchareb's follow-up to his acclaimed Days of Glory. Bouchareb's sequel charts the fortunes of three survivors of the Setif massacre. The film has already sparked accusations of being 'anti-French', a charge that seems unlikely to cut much ice with its outspoken director
Photograph: Christophe Karaba/EPA

Alejandro González Iñarritu helped kick-start the buena onda of Latin-Americana with the electrifying Amores Perros, before heading to Hollywood to shoot 21 Grams and Babel. Biutiful returns him to his Spanish-language roots, with the turbulent tale of the relationship between a wheeler-dealer (Javier Bardem) and his childhood friend who now works as a cop
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Mahamat-Saleh Haroun was born in Chad, is based in Paris and his features (Daratt, Abouna) have won awards around the globe. A Screaming Man focuses on the humiliations of a former swimming champion, struggling to keep his head up during Chad's civil war
Photograph: Claudio Onorati/EPA

Im Sang-soo installed himself as an enfant terrible of South Korean film, courtesy of a series of provocative features that culminated in The President's Last Bang (about the assassination of Park Chung Hee). The Housemaid is a remake of a 1960 thriller, a middle-class nightmare in which a below-stairs domestic takes revenge on her employers
Photograph: Juan Herrero/EPA

Few film-makers are so revered on the festival scene as 69-year-old Abbas Kiarostami, a veteran of 40 films, who took the Palme d'Or for his 1997 feature Taste of Cherry. But changing times in Iran have now forced Kiarostami to up sticks for Tuscany. Certified Copy is shot in English and French and pairs Juliette Binoche with the British opera singer William Shimell. Needless to say, the homeland is unimpressed by this cross-cultural pedigree. Certified Copy was promptly banned by the Iranian culture ministry
Photograph: Claudio Onorati/EPA

It's never been easy to keep tabs on Takeshi Kitano, a Japanese multi-hyphenate whose CV lists him as a film-maker, an actor, a painter, a poet, a comedian and a sometime TV host. Happily there is some constancy. His latest film, Outrage, sounds like another deadpan yakuza thriller, a film to send the fans home happy
Photograph: Paul Cooper

Is there room for poetry at this year's Cannes film festival? Apparently so. Poetry is the latest offering from South Korea's Lee Chang-dong. According to early reports, 'it tells the story of a suburban woman in her 60s who develops an interest in poetry.' If ever a film looked guaranteed to electrify the paparazzi and spark a storm on the red carpet, Poetry – we think – probably isn't the one
Photograph: Christophe Karaba/EPA

Before today, British hopes largely rested on the great, bear-like shoulders of Mike Leigh. He is a man beloved of the Cannes crowds, who won the Palme d'Or for Secrets and Lies back in 1996. But this is literally Another Year. Details are scant, although Leigh's latest finds room for his reliable stable of performers, from Jim Broadbent and Lesley Manville through to Phil Davis and Ruth Sheen
Photograph: Ian West/PA

But wait, any room for a late arrival? Britain's Ken Loach took the Palme d'Or in 2006, was in competition last year with Looking for Eric and was absolutely-positively not coming this year with his Iraq-set drama Route Irish. Wouldn't you know it? He's just changed his mind
Photograph: Jeff Vespa/WireImage

Feel free to shed a tear for Hollywood, so cruelly snubbed at this year's event. Director Doug Liman (Go, Bourne 1, Mr & Mrs Smith) provides a dollop of solace. His political thriller Fair Game is on a mission to expose Bush-era skullduggery. Naomi Watts stars as unmasked CIA agent Valerie Plame, Sean Penn as her off-message diplomat husband
Photograph: Franck Robichon/EPA

Sergei Loznitsa is arguably the darkest of this year's dark horses. He comes cantering in with My Joy, which follows a lorry driver's odyssey through rural Russia. But just what is the secret of Loznitsa's success? 'I try to look at a subject and show what is interesting,' he confided to one interviewer. Rival film-makers take note
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Italy's Daniele Luchetti is a former protege of Nanni Moretti who scored an art-house hit with My Brother Is an Only Child. He takes to the starting grid with La Nostra Vita, which spins the tale of a Roman prole who is poleaxed by a tragic death. Apparently it's a comedy
Photograph: Alessandra Benedetti/Corbis

The road to redemption leads up the Croisette for veteran director Nikita Mikhalkov. In recent weeks he has been labelled a stooge of the Kremlin and seen his Burnt By the Sun 2 (a sequel to his Oscar-winning 90s hit) crash and burn at the Russian box office. Mikhalkov has much to prove at this year's festival
Photograph: Leszek Szymanski/EPA

The distinctive Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo is a firm favourite of the Cannes organisers. He brought the gloriously surreal Johanna to the festival in 2005 and was in competition last year with Delta. Now he's aiming for the top prize with Tender Son: The Frankenstein Project
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Flying the flag for the ancien régime of French cinema is the redoubtable Bertrand Tavernier, who began his career working for Jean-Pierre Melville and scooped his first prize on the festival circuit with The Clockmaker, way back in 1974. He's in Cannes with La Princesse de Montpensier, a 16th-century romance based on a story by Madame de La Fayette
Photograph: Joerg Carstensen/EPA

Apichatpong Weerasethakul has quietly established himself as one of the most distinctive voices in world cinema, thanks to such woozy, fragmented and slippery works as Tropical Malady and Syndromes and a Century. He provoked the ire of the Thai authorities after refusing to cut four scenes from his last picture but he seems more relaxed about his name, which is often shortened to 'Joe'. The director is up for the Palme d'Or with Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives – a film that shall henceforth be known as Steve
Photograph: Claudio Onorati/EPA

Rounding up the competition comes Wang Xiaoshuai, a leading light of the 'Sixth Generation' of Chinese film-makers, who broke on to the international scene with Beijing Bicycle in 2001. Wang took the Cannes jury prize in 2005 for Shanghai Dreams. This year his hopes rest on Chongqing Blues, a father-son tale from the social-realist frontline of modern-day China
Photograph: Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images