CANNES LINEUP ANNOUNCED

British director Mike Leigh, who has already won the Cannes Film Festival’s top Palme d’Or award twice, will be going for his third win this year with the announcement that his new film, Another Year, has been selected for the competition. At a press conference in Paris today, festival director Thierry Frémaux announced the 63rd annual festival’s lineup for this year, which included only one American film screening in competition, Doug Liman’s spy thriller, Fair Game, starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts. Oliver Stone’s Wall Street sequel, Money Never Sleeps, was selected to close the festival, while Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger and British director Stephen Frears’s Tamara Drewe, starring Gemma Arterton, are also set to be screened out of competition. Among the 16 competitors are France’s Jean-Luc Godard, who returns to the festival with his drama Socialisme and Iranian director Abbas Kirarostami, who returns with his first film shot abroad, Copie Conforme, filmed in France with Juliette Binoche. Spain’s Alejandro Gonzalez Iñaritu, another festival veteran, will screen his latest feature, Biutiful. Twenty-year-old British actor Aaron Johnson, who stars in the comic book adaptation Kick-Ass, opening on Friday, will make his debut on the festival’s screens in Japanese director Hideo Nakata’s Chatroom. The festival is due to open on May 12 with the screening of Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood and close on May 23. It had previously been announced that Tim Burton will serve as president of the jury, which will also include Kate Beckinsale and Benicio del Toro.