CANNES Veteran directors Wes Anderson, Ken Loach and Wim Wenders are among those in the running for the Cannes Film Festival's coveted Palme d'Or at Saturday's closing ceremony, with 21 films in competition for the top prize.
The closing movie this year will be Pixar's "Elemental", an animated feature about a city where the four elements live together, featuring the voices of Leah Lewis and Mamoudou Athie.
Swedish director Ruben Ostlund, one of only nine directors who has won the Palme d'Or twice, for "Triangle of Sadness" in 2022 and 2017's "The Square", is this year's jury president.
He has promised there would be no leaks from his jury, whose members include actors Paul Dano ("The Fabelmans") and Brie Larson ("Captain Marvel"), and French director Julia Ducournau.
Of the directors competing, Loach is the only one with two top prizes under his belt, while four - Wenders, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Nanni Moretti and Kore-eda Hirokazu - have one.
This year has a record seven female directors in the running for the top prize, which only two women have previously won - Jane Campion in 1993 and Ducournau in 2021.
The Variety and IndieWire trade publications ranked courtroom drama "Anatomy of a Fall" by Justine Triet, starring German actor Sandra Hueller, as first pick to win the top prize.
Hueller also stars in another competitor, Jonathan Glazer's portrait of life next to the Auschwitz death camp, "Zone of Interest", which Peter Bradshaw, critic for Britain's the Guardian newspaper, predicted would be the winner.
This year's festival was one of the biggest in years in terms of pure celebrity power, with Hollywood legends Harrison Ford, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Isabella Rossellini and Sean Penn all hitting the red carpet.
Its film market - a sales, distribution and financing event running in parallel with the competition, that counts as the world's largest forum for buying and selling movie rights - also saw record attendance.
More than 14,000 participants from over 120 countries crowded the film market this year, surpassing 2019's previous peak of 12,500.
(Reporting by Miranda Murray; Editing by Jan Harvey)