French movies will bookend the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival, which this year sees 22 features from as far afield as Malaysia and Kyrgyzstan. In contrast to 2009, when Francis Ford Coppola opened proceedings at the sidebar with his self-financed picture Tetro, half of this year’s lineup will be from first-time directors.

Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tullaye’s documentary Benda Bilili!, about an orchestra made up entirely of disabled people, will open the sidebar, while the closing night film will be Fabienne Berthaud’s Lily Sometimes, starring Diane Kruger and Ludivine Sagnier as sisters dealing with the sudden death of their mother.

Flying the flag for Britain are Alicia Duffy’s feature debut All Good Children, a psychological drama about two Irish kids coping with their mother’s suicide in France, and Stephen Kijak’s documentary Stones in Exile. Duffy’s Crow Stone was a prize-winner in Cannes’s Cinéfondation competition in 2001. Kijak’s film, about the making of the Rolling Stones’ legendary Exile on Main St album, will be shown in a special screening, as will be veteran US documentary-maker Frederick Wiseman’s Boxing Gym.

This year’s event will be the first under new artistic director Frederic Boyer, who replaces Olivier Père in the role. Of the 22 features selected, all but one will have their world premiere at Cannes, with 11 are from first-time directors: these include Love Like Poison by Katell Quillevere (France), Little Baby Jesus of Flanders by Gust Vandenberghe (Belgium) and Leap Year by Michael Rowe (Mexico).

“I wanted to change things up and not take any Sundance films unless they were exceptional,” Boyer said. He described his selection as “smart, vivacious, surprising, exciting, musical and focused on the world”.

Some of the better known names in the lineup include Danish film-maker Christoffer Boe, who won the Camera d’Or in 2003 with Reconstruction, and Louis Garrel, who played Eva Green’s twin brother in Bernardo Bertolucci’s salacious drama The Dreamers. Boe presents Everything Will Be Fine, a thriller about a film director who flees the scene of a car accident but later discovers the man he ran into has a dangerous secret. Garrel’s effort, Petit Tailleuer, will screen in the short films section.

Entries from the US include Cam Archer’s Shit Year, starring Ellen Barkin as a has-been Hollywood actor who falls in love with a younger man, played by Luke Grimes, and Alistair Banks Griffin’s first feature, Two Gates of Sleep, which centres on two brothers who embark on a difficult journey to honour their dying mother’s final request.

Kyrgyzstan’s entry is Aktan Arym Kubat’s The Light Thief, which Boyer said he expected to attract plenty of attention. “It’s very political,” he said. (Source)