Cannes Film Festival 2019: intriguing programming, with great influence | Peter Bradshaw | Movie

This year's Cannes selection has been unveiled under a venerated image, almost a tutelary deity. This poster shows Agnès Varda, 26, standing on the shoulders of a technician, shooting her first feature, La Pointe Courte. Some may think that the revolution of the genre starts and ends in Cannes: there are only four female directors in competition and 13 in the selection. The festival says it is working in good faith on this issue, that its selection board is gender balanced and that significant progress can not be made immediately.

Elsewhere, Cannes sticks to the question of Netflix, despite the suspicions of all that she may have to change position. But no. The giant of online broadcasting does not respect the rules of the festival in terms of theatrical distribution in France, so it is not invited to the party. However, Nicolas Winding Refn's Too Old To Die Young – bringing a sexy glow of neon to the Cannes selection – is a television show from Amazon, whose festival will broadcast episodes four and five in a competition location.

The big parade is Tarantino with his film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but it is apparently not ready. Other omissions include James Gray with his science fiction drama Ad Astra and last year's Palme d'Or winner Hirokazu Kore-eda with his first English film, The Truth. Again: not ready, and that may also explain the absence of Roy Andersson's film, About Endlessness.

But Cannes can attract new filmmakers and an exciting new cinema from Asia (which is increasingly part of the brand's identity). As always, however, the festival has lined up its masters, its silverback gorillas from the league of authors – as well as its main troublemakers, disrupters, bad veterans (again, the gender issue is present), with people such as Werner Herzog and Abel Ferrara in the sidebar dedicated to special screenings. Alain Delon receives the Palm of Honor this year. But the most extravagant act of ancestor worship is the appearance (out of competition) of The best years of a life of Claude Lelouch, 81 years old, an update of his classic A Man and A Woman from 1966, reporting Jean-Louis. Trintignant and Anouk Aimée to their previous roles.

Jim Jarmusch offers a large amount of Hollywood confectionery – and a nice comedy – with the opening film: The Dead Do not Die. British Ken Loach is back with his film Sorry I missed you, which tells the story of a deliveryman under pressure in the economy of the zero hour market. The other UK winners are Dexter Fletcher, who will present his biopic Elton John Rocketman out of competition (Sir Elton is expected to play on stage before the premiere), and Asif Kapadia, who presents his documentary on legendary footballer Diego Maradona's competition – with the title. Argentina should appear on the red carpet.

Pedro Almodóvar reaffirms his full ownership of Cannes with the candidacy of his new film, Pain & Glory, on the troubled life of a director. Marco Bellocchio is back in Cannes with The Traitor, about the Sicilian gangster Tomasso Buscetta, the first major mafia to break the code of silence.

A hidden life of Terrence Malick interprets Matthias Schoenarts in the role of the Austrian Franz Jägerstätter, who refused to fight for Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Oh Mercy!, By Arnaud Desplechin, with Lea Seydoux, tells the story of a police chief from northern France who is trying to solve the brutal murder of an old woman. The Dardenne brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc return with Young Ahmed, the story of a Belgian Muslim teenager radicalized by extremists. The Dardennes, like Loach, are part of the double-winner elite club, and any new film from them must be of particular interest, even though I thought their previous film, The Unknown Girl, was very uncertain.

Jessica Hausner is one of the most exciting talents in European cinema. Her 2009 film, Lourdes, claims to be a kind of masterpiece – and it's great to see her compete with Little Joe, which would be a futuristic nightmare about genetic engineering. (Like Loach, Sorry, we missed you, it's a production supported by BFI.)

Perhaps the most anticipated work is Bacurau, or Nighthawk, from the Brazilian author Kleber Mendonça Filho and his co-director Juliano Dornelles: a mysterious journey into the interior of Brazil. Korean author Bong Joon-ho is just as excited about Parasite: a psychological thriller about a family who is very interested in their neighbors, which plunges them into a troubled world. Chinese director Diao Yinan's The Wild Goose Lake talks about the leader of a runaway biker gang meeting a desperate woman. This filmmaker won his Golden Bear in Berlin with his Black Coal, Thin Ice, and it looks like a fascinating competition choice.

The enigmatic Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu returns to Cannes with his film La Gomera, or The Whistlers – and the festival has done so much to support the new wave of Romanian directors very exciting. La Gomera would be a black crime drama with a touch of black comic, exactly the impassive tonal mix that the festival audience adores in this filmmaker.

Mati Diop (who worked with Claire Denis as an actor) presents here his Atlantic, a drama about Senegalese performing a terrifying ship crossing – developed from his 16-minute documentary, Atlantiques, of 2009. L & rsquo; Enfant terrible and young master Xavier Dolan returns to the competition with his Quebec drama Matthias and Maxime in which he promises to treat the problems related to homosexuality more directly than in the past. The film Les Misérables, actor-director of Ladj Ly, is a Parisian crime drama based on a previous short film, which promises to produce the realistic impact and shock that Cannes always wants to include. In Sybil of Justine Triet, Virginie Efira is the eponymous therapist, bored by her life and who aspires to return to the true vocation of writing. Her new patient Margot, played by Adele Exarchopoulos, is a troubled actor whose life may be too tempting for a writer to ignore.

Isabelle Huppert is an expected personality in Cannes and she arrives on the red carpet of American filmmaker Ira Sachs, whose Frankie speaks of a family on holiday in Portugal: Brendan Gleeson, Marisa Tomei and Greg Kinnear. This other Cannes maestro, long absent from the radar, is Elia Suleiman, the Palestinian director who usually brings his touch emollient and keatonesque comic about Israel and the Palestinian people. His new film in competition, It Must Be Heaven, sees the director traveling in different places and finds points of comparison with his native country. In Paris, in New York, in every city, there are cops and bureaucracy, checkpoints and fanaticism.

Celine Sciamma is one of the most evolved and intelligent presences in Europe – she directed the exceptional Girlhood in 2014 – and her new film is a welcome addition. The portrait of a woman on fire depicts Noémie Merlant, a young painter to whom we have entrusted the portrait of a young woman (Adèle Haenel) without her knowledge – a project of artistic surveillance and reporting. It promises to be as complex and intelligent as all his other films.

So another intriguing and passionately opaque selection: like seeing the gifts stacked under the Christmas tree, but not being allowed to open them. The announcement in Cannes still looks like a brilliant sequence of pre-credits, before the main attraction begins.

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