Broad film choices for Director’s Fortnight at Cannes

Twenty-one films make-up the main programme for the 2013 Quinzaine des Réalisateurs or Director's Fortnight, a French international film festival which is held concurrently with the Critic's Week and the Cannes Film Festival in the south of France from 16th to 26th May.

The first-time feature-film makers whose work is selected for the Quinzaine, also compete for the Caméra d'Or award, just like those whose films are in the Cannes Film Festival's sections.

This year seven movie makers present their first feature. Among them a documentary by Kaveh Bakhtiari, called L'Escale or The Stopover. He's of Iranian origin, lives in Switzerland and has filmed a group of Iranians in transit in Switzerland, on their way to Greece.

Another is a film called Les garçons et Guillaume, à table (Boys and Guillaume, Dinner Time) made in France by Guillaume Galliene, who also wrote the screenplay and acts in the film. The artistic director of the Quinzaine, Edouard Waintrop, described it as a comedy.

Another film he describes as both a comedy and "post-Godardian" is La Fille du 14 juillet, a film d'auteur - as are the majority in this festival - by Antonin Peretjako.

The line-up includes a variety of genre films, including crime thrillers, comedy and horror, according to Waintrop.

One such scary movie is called We Are What We Are by Jim Mickle, and which Waintrop feels says a lot about a religious sense of duty, and about the US.

Returning after making his mark at the Quinzaine with last year's 5 and a quarter hours of family-mafia saga in India ( The Gangs of Wasseypur), is producer-director-screenwriter Anurag Kashyap. This year's film Ugly is a "short" quips Waintrop, "it lasts only two hours".

Waintrop has the final word in the selection, and he makes no bones about being moved by certain films.

Among them this year, one he described as a tear-jerker: The Selfish Giant, by UK director Clio Barnard.

Not to be missed, a bonafide short-film session where one of the longest film titles in the world will hit the screen: Man kann nicht auf einmal alles tun, aber man kann auf einmal alles lassen (You can't do everything all at once, but you can drop everything all at once), by Swiss director Marie-Elsa Sgualdo.

Also a film from Hungary and one from Romania in a programme where central and eastern European films are less present than those from Latin America, Asia or the English-speaking world, and of course, from France.