Leigh And Loach Up For Top Cannes Prize Again

Films by British directors Mike Leigh and Ken Loach have been selected to compete for the Palme d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Leigh's Mr Turner and Loach's Jimmy's Hall are shortlisted alongside 18 films selected from more than 1,700 which were submitted.

A Tommy Lee Jones western and a David Cronenberg expose on Hollywood will also be in competition at the May 14-25 event on the French Riviera.

Mr Turner is a biopic about the British painter JMW Turner, starring Timothy Spall.

Jimmy's Hall, about a political activist deported from Ireland during the country's 'Red Scare' in the 1930s, is expected to be Loach's last feature film.

Both Loach and Leigh are regulars at the festival and previous winners of the Palme d'Or.

Leigh won it in 1996 for Secrets And Lies, while another of Loach's films set in Ireland - The Wind That Shakes The Barley - won a decade later.

Ben Roberts, Director of the BFI Film Fund said: "Congratulations to Mike and Ken whose wonderful films will light up the Croisette with their colourful, transcendent reflections on life and love, politics and change, art and music.

"It's been a privilege to work with two true masters of British cinema at their finest."

Director Jane Campion, the only woman to win the Palme d'Or, is leading the festival's jury this year.

Organisers have already said the big-budget biopic Grace of Monaco by French director Olivier Dahan and starring Nicole Kidman will hold its world premiere at the Cannes opening.

Other films being shown out of competition include Ned Benson's Eleanor Rigby, which stars Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy, and Ryan Gosling's directorial debut Lost River.

The festival is famed as much for launching the careers of film-makers such as Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino as for its glitzy red carpet photo calls, luxury yachts, star-studded parties and diamond heists.

Last year over $1m (£660,000) worth of Chopard gems, which were due to be loaned to stars walking the red carpet, were stolen from a hotel.

List of Palme d'Or nominees:

Sils Maria, Olivier Assayas

Saint Laurent, Bertrand Bonello

Kis Uykusu (Winter's Sleep), Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Maps to the Stars, David Cronenberg

Deux Jours, Une Nuit (Two Days, One Night), Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Mommy, Xavier Dolan

Captives (The Captive), Atom Egoyan

Adieu au Langage (Goodbye to Language), Jean-Luc Godard

The Search, Michel Hazanavicius

The Homesman, Tommy Lee Jones

Futatsume No Mado (Still the Water), Naomi Kawase

Mr Turner, Mike Leigh

Jimmy's Hall, Ken Loach

Foxcatcher, Bennett Miller

La Meraviglie, Alice Rohrwacher

Timbuktu, Abderrahmane Sissako

Relatos Salvajes (Wild Tales), Damian Szifron

Leviathan, Andrey Zvyagintsev