The movie, directed by Nicolas Refn of Denmark, is due out in July and stars Ryan Gosling as a Muay Thai trainer and drug dealer investigating the death of his brother.
This week it joined movies from Stephen Soderbergh and the Coen Brothers from the US, and France’s Roman Polanski in contention for the festival’s top prize.
Soderbergh’s eagerly-awaited Behind the Candelabra, with Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, recounts the flamboyant life of entertainer Liberace, who masked his homosexuality from public view.
Inside Llewyn Davis by Joel and Ethan Coen starring Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan and Justin Timberlake, in a tale about a singer-songwriter in the 1960s folk scene in New York.
Polanski, 79, first competed in Cannes back in 1976. His new movie Venus in Fur features his wife Emmanuelle Seigner in an adaptation of a Broadway play drawn from an erotic novel by Leopold Sacher-Masoch – who inspired the term masochism.
Polanski will also have a second film at Cannes, Weekend of a Champion, which will be screened out of competition.
The annual movie extravaganza on the French Riviera, seen as the most prestigious festival in cinema, runs from May 15 to 26.
Nineteen movies are now in the running for the Golden Palm, and others may be added in the coming weeks.
The director of only one of those movies is a woman – Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, sister of former French first lady Carla Bruni, with Un Chateau en Italie. Last year’s line-up did not include any women directors.
Asian films with their hat in the ring for the Palme d’Or include Japanese directors Takashi Miike with the thriller Wara no Tate (”Shield of Straw”) and Kore-eda Hirokazu with Soshite Chichi ni Naru (”Like Father Like Son”) and China’s Jia Zhangke for Tian Zhu Ding (”A Touch of Sin”).
Famed for its top-grade celebrities, glitzy parties and luxury yachts, the festival this year will see Robert Redford and Marion Cotillard as well as Douglas and Damon among the VIPs gracing the red carpet.
But the festival will also turn the spotlight on obscure directors and young talents, and has a tradition of screening quirky or provocative movies.
Steven Spielberg will head the festival jury and Amelie star Audrey Tautou will host the opening and closing ceremonies.
Jerry Lewis, the 84 year-old US comedy star from the 1950s and 1960s who later poured his efforts into raising money for muscular dystrophy research, will receive a special tribute.