Rumours are circulating in Paris two weeks ahead of the press conference at which the official selection for the 63rd Cannes Film Festival (May 12-23, 2010) will be unveiled. And uncertainty will reign until April 15 for this year many films are apparently caught up in a race against time to be ready for Cannes.

According to our sources, the race for the Palme d’Or will almost certainly include Tree of Life by US director Terrence Malick; Biutiful by Mexico’s Alejandro González Inárritu (see news); Tamara Drewe [trailer] by UK director Stephen Frears (see news); Another Year [trailer] by fellow Brit Mike Leigh; and two Korean films: Poetry by Lee Chang-dong and The Housemaid by Im Sang-soo.
The competition line-up may also include US director Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, Miral by fellow US filmmaker Julian Schnabel, Outrage by Japan’s Takeshi Kitano, and two Argentinean features: Pablo Trapero’s Carancho and Diego Lerman’s Moral Sciences. Hungary also hopes to be selected in extremis with Bela Tarr’s The Turin Horse, or even Kornel Mundruczo’s The Frankenstein Project [trailer, film focus] (see news).

On the French side, the die is not yet cast, although favourites include Olivier Assayas’s Carlos [trailer] (which would be screened in its long version - see news); Bertrand Tavernier’s La Princesse de Montpensier [trailer] (see news); and Rachid Bouchareb’s Outside the Law [trailer] (see news). Guillaume Canet’s Little White Lies (see news) is an outsider favourite.

Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s French/Italian co-production The Certified Copy [trailer] could be selected out of competition (the fact that its star Juliette Binoche appears on the Cannes 2010 poster seems incompatible with a competition screening), as could Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger [trailer] and Joann Sfar and Antoine Delesvaux’s French animated film The Rabbi’s Cat.

Among the other most-cited possible Croisette contenders (a non-exhaustive list including all sections) are Jean-Luc Godard’s Socialism [trailer]; Black Heaven [trailer, film focus] by France’s Gilles Marchand (see news); Tournée [trailer, film focus] (“Tour”) by fellow French director Mathieu Amalric; Rabbit Hole by US director John Cameron Mitchell; Uncle Boonmee by Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul; The Essence of Killing by Poland’s Jerzy Skolimowski (see news); Romanian features Aurora [trailer] by Cristi Puiu (see news) and Principles of Life by Constantin Popescu; Adrienn Pal by Hungary’s Agnes Kocsis (see news); R U There by Dutch filmmaker David Verbeek; and All Good Children by young Brit director Alicia Duffy (see news).