Ken Loach is the sole British director selected for this year’s Cannes film festival, whose mouth-watering programme was announced today. Loach is a favourite of Le Croisette, winning the Palme D’Or in 2006 for The Wind That Shakes the Barley. He will be on jollier than usual territory this year, with his comedy The Angels' Share, about a Glaswegian ne’er-do-well who visits a distillery and gets a sniff of a new career.

The Brit is in very good company indeed as Cannes lays on a veritable who’s who of auteurs, including Abbas Kiarostami, Michael Haneke, Cristian Mungiu (all of whom have won the top prize), Jacques Audiard and David Cronenberg, whose Cosmopolis stars Twilight’s Robert Pattinson.

All eyes will be on Holy Motors, the first feature in 13 years by the former enfant terrible of French cinema, Leos Carax, and on the Brazilian Walter Salles’s long-awaited adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (pictured).

Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, starring Bruce Willis, Edward Norton and Tilda Swinton, opens the festival on 16 May.