Rita di Santo reports from the press conference introducing this year's Cannes Film Festival.

It will be all about “romance and politics” declared Thierry Frémaux, director of the Cannes Film Festival, as he announced this year’s programme (14-25 May).

A quick glance at the nineteen titles in competition tends to confirm Frémaux’s statement, with some highly-anticipated works from heavy-hitters such as Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You, Pedro Almodovar’ s Pain and Glory, Arnaud Desplechin’ s Oh Mercy!, the Dardenne brothers’ The Young Ahmed, veteran Marco Bellocchio’ s The Traitor, and Palestinian director Elia Suleiman’s It Must Be Heaven and – top of the cake – Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life.

Cannes will be provocative from day one. Zombies could be seen on the first red carpet, with Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die opening the festival. It’s about the small town of Centerville, where the buried rise from their graves to feast on the living. The citizens of the town must fight for their survival.

The unconventional will return with the young French filmmaker Xavier Dolan’s Matthias et Maxieme. More titles from the new generation include Les Misérables by Ladj Ly on Paris suburbs, Bacurau by the Brazilian Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, The Gomera by Rumanian Corneliu Porumboiu, and Frankie by Ira Sachs, with Isabelle Huppert.

The presence of female directors is still not very strong, but at least is expanding, with four promising titles: Portrait Of A Lady On Fire by Céline Sciamma, Sibyl by Justine Triet, Atlantique by Mati Diop and Jessica Hausner’s Little Joe. Two more Arab women present films in Un Certain Regard: Papicha by Algerian director Mounia Meddour, and Adam by Moroccan director Maryam Touzani. In total, 13 of the 51 filmmakers (a little over 25%) announced in the overall selection are women.

Also, the quantity of American titles is not as strong as last year, but out of competition one of the most awaited Studio titles is Rocket Man, a biopic of Sir Elton John directed by British Dexter Fletcher, who replaced Bryan Singer on the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody after he was fired.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino's latest film, was not mentioned because it is "still in editing". But like every year, the Festival reserves the possibility of hosting a film at the last moment.

Also out of competition, but one to look out for, is Claude Lelouch’s sequel to his Palme D’Or-winning A Man and a Woman, The Most Beautiful Years.

The last words from Thierry Frémaux were dedicated to explaining the situation with the streaming giant “Netflix”. To appear in Competition at Cannes, a film must be available for theatrical distribution in France, disqualifying Netflix titles released directly onto the streaming platform due to the country’s theatrical windows policy. The policy caused Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma to miss out on a Cannes spot in 2018, instead premiering in Venice in August.

But despite the strict politics of Cannes Festival, the Palme d’Or is still considered the highest honour in world cinema, preserving the artform and contesting the illusions of the commercial.