Palme d’Or winner Ken Loach returns to Cannes with new film

Ken Loach will return to the Cannes Film Festival when his new film Sorry We Missed You premieres in competition.

The British director’s last feature film – I, Daniel Blake – won the prestigious Palme d’Or prize at the French festival in 2016.

His latest offering, starring Kris Hitchen and Debbie Honeywood, follows a hard-up delivery driver and his wife struggling to get by in modern-day England.

It is one of two films supported by the British Film Institute with National Lottery funding to compete at the festival.

The other is Little Joe, starring Ben Whishaw and Emily Beecham and helmed by Jessica Hausner, one of four female directors with films in the 18-strong competition at the festival.

There are a total of 13 films directed by women in the official selection of the festival.

The festival has previously confirmed it will open with a screening of Jim Jarmusch’s zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die, which features Iggy Pop, Selena Gomez and Tom Waits.

Other high-profile films in the line-up include Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life and Pedro Almodovar’s Pain And Glory, as well as Xavier Dolan’s Matthias And Maxime.

The festival will also showcase the first two episodes of Too Old To Die Young, director Nicolas Winding Refn’s series for Amazon Prime starring Miles Teller, out of competition.

Notably absent from the line-up is Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, starring Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, which was widely expected to debut at the festival.

However, it could still be added at a later date.

Rocketman, a biopic of Sir Elton John starring Taron Egerton and Richard Madden, will also screen out of competition at the festival, as will Asif Kapadia’s film about Diego Maradona.