Cannes, May 16 (UNI) The Cannes film festival will reach a landmark 70th edition tomorrow when the influential event in the French Riviera opens tomorrow to a 12-day extravaganza of the best of world cinema. 'Ismail's Ghosts' by French director Arnaud Desplechin starring the Oscar-winning Marion Cotillard will be the opening movie of the festival, which will feature new works by some of the world's finest filmmakers like Austrian director Michael Haneke, Japanese director Naomi Kawase, German director Fatih Akin, Korean director Hong Sangsoo and American director Todd Haynes. American filmmaker Sofia Coppola, Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay and French director Michel Hazanavicius are among the others competing for the prestigious Palme d'Or, the top prize of the festival. Haneke will be vying for a record third Palme d'Or with his new film, 'Happy End', called a snapshot from the life of a bourgeois European family in the backdop of the refugee crisis. Haneke won his first Palme d'Or in 2009 for 'The White Ribbon' and the second for 'Amour' three years later. Haneke's film is not the only one focusing on the refugee crisis. English actor Vanessa Redgrave's directorial debut, 'Sea Sorrow', also handles the same subject along with 'Jupiter's Moon' by Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo and Mexican director Alejandro Inarritu's virtual reality installation 'Virtually present, Physically invisible'. Filmmakers are also dealing with terrorism, civil wars and climate change. Fatih Akin's 'In the Fade', part of the competition section, tells the story of a woman whose life collapses after the death of her husband and son in a bomb attack. Sri Lankan Jude Ratnam's 'Demons in Paradise', in the special screenings section, is about the civil war and its aftermath while former US vice-president Al Gore continues with his climate change documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' in a new work, 'An Inconvenient Truth Sequel: Truth to Power' directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk. Acclaimed Spanish filmaker Pedro Almodovar heads the competition jury, which also has American actors Jessica Chastain and Will Smith, and Italian director Paolo Sorrentino. Coinciding with the 70th year of India's independence, the festival this year has no entries from the world's largest film-producing nation, barring a short film by a Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune student and a film project from an Assamese director in the Cannes film market. 'Afternoon Clouds' by FTII student Payal Kapadia is part of the Cinefondation category for film school projects, and 'Village Rockstars' by Rima Das, which has been selected in the Go to Cannes section for work-in-progress ventures. "Well, what can I say? It is a great country for movies," Cannes festival General Delegate Thierry Fremaux told a news conference at the announcement of official selection in Paris last month when asked why there were no Indian films this year, without offering any explanation. The Indian Pavilion in the Cannes film market at the festival will be inaugurated on Thursday by Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting, Col. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore. Last year too, India had no feature films in the official selection. The only Indian entry at the festival last year was a documentary, 'The Cinema Travellers', in the Cannes Classics section. The festival will pay tributes to Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, who passed away in June last year, by screenings his film '24 Frames' made last year. French filmmaker Agnes Varda join hands with compatriot and photographer JR, known only by his pseudonym to create open-air photographic galleries in their venture, 'Faces Places'. French-Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski's new film, 'Based on a True Story', will be shown in the Out of Competition section. Also in Cannes will be American actor Kristen Stewart with 'Come Swim', a short film directed by her. The festival will run up to May 28. UNI XC AE 1420