STRONG US SHOWING

American directors have their biggest showing in six years in the main competition at Cannes, making up five of 20 films vying for the coveted Palme D'Or for best picture awarded by a jury headed by Steven Spielberg on the final day, May 26.

Steven Soderbergh's "Behind The Candelabra", starring Douglas as the gay pianist Liberace and Damon as his young lover, is already generating huge interest, particularly as Soderbergh has hinted that this could be his last movie.

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Also in focus is Joel and Ethan Coen's "Inside Llewyn Davis" about New York's gritty 1960s folk music scene, James Gray's "The Immigrant", Jim Jarmusch's vampire movie "Only Lovers Left Alive", and Alexander Payne's "Nebraska".

French filmmakers are also well represented with five films in the main competition, including Roman Polanski's French-language "La Venus a la Fourrure" (Venus in Fur), a backstage drama starring his wife Emmanuelle Seigner.

Two Japanese movies are in the running and one each from China, Chad, Mexico, Iran, Tunisia, Italy and the Netherlands while Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn's "Only God Forgives" with Ryan Gosling in a Thai gangland thriller is creating buzz.

Critics have earmarked "Le Passe" by Iran's Asghar Farhadi and "Like Father, Like Son" by leading Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda as strong domestic dramas. Farhadi won an Oscar for best foreign language film in 2012 for "A Separation".

Despite criticism of an all-male lineup last year, only one woman director has made the 2013 competition. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, sister of former French first lady Carla Bruni, is in the field with "Un Chateau en Italie".

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