Hottest tickets at Cannes Film Festival

Taron Egerton as Elton John in a scene from "Rocketman," which will be shown during the Cannes Film Festival. Photo / AP

Even in a world where Avengers: Endgame can break the US$2 billion ($3m) box-office barrier in 11 days, Cannes remains the centre of the cinematic universe. Its 72nd edition opens on Wednesday with a line-up of 154 features, a notable 10 of which are detailed below. Two years after The Great Rift, Netflix remains a touchy subject: dated French broadcast laws are the sticking point. But even in the absence of the streaming giant's new Scorsese and Soderbergh titles, this year's selection stands in muscle-flexing contrast to the recent, quieter, "transitional years".

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
The jewel in Cannes' 2019 programme almost slipped down the back of the sofa, due to a cumbersome editing process that left writer-director Quentin Tarantino scrambling to meet the mid-May deadline. But it's finished, and ready for unveiling on the 25th anniversary of Pulp Fiction's now-mythical 1994 world premiere. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as a Burt Reynolds-esque hunk and his trusty stunt double, blundering through golden-age Hollywood's dying days.

Sorry We Missed You
Ken Loach is among the hardiest of Cannes perennials, but isn't the only two-time Palme d'Or winner in this year's competition strand. (Bonjour, Belgium's Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne.) Still, after the surprise triumph of I, Daniel Blake in 2016, he returns with what is likely to be his last film, Sorry We Missed You, a drama about a struggling dad. It stars Kris Hitchen, whose highest-profile role to date was a walk-on part in Coronation Street in 2017.

Rocketman
The early PR push around Dexter Fletcher's Elton John biopic seems determined to distance it from Bohemian Rhapsody in a few key respects, not least with a franker approach to its subject's sexuality and repeated assurances that star Taron Egerton sang the songs himself.

The Dead Don't Die
It's hard to see how this ensemble zombie comedy from Jim Jarmusch can fail to charm, with Bill Murray and Adam Driver as small-town cops leading the motley resistance against a rising tide of the living dead. Tilda Swinton also features as a sword-fighting mortician, naturally.

The Lighthouse
Robert Eggers' 2015 period piece The Witch was one of the most auspicious debuts in years. His follow-up stars Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as lighthouse keepers in New England in the 1890s.

Wounds
This psychological horror is from Babak Anvari, whose 2016 breakthrough was the Tehran-set ghost story Under the Shadow. Armie Hammer and Dakota Johnson bring movie-star wattage to this story of a bartender who snoops through a discarded phone, only to be sent text messages, images and sounds that freeze his blood.

Pain & Glory
In the 21st film from Pedro Almodóvar, Antonio Banderas is a film director who hopes to revive his creative mojo. It should go down well at a festival that helped establish its director as one of cinema's most essential voices.

Too Old to Die Young
An out-of-competition slot for two episodes of Nicolas Winding Refn's coming Amazon series, an LA-based cop show.

Rambo V: Last Blood
Sylvester Stallone and Cannes go together like ris de veau topped with a cheeseburger. At a late-night event this year he'll share images from the forthcoming Rambo V, in which the Vietnam veteran takes on a Mexican cartel, before introducing a new restoration of Ted Kotcheff's First Blood.

Diego Maradona
Asif Kapadia's passion project about the Argentine football icon centres on his time at SSC Napoli in the 80s, but looks back to his shanty-town beginnings and to the personal and professional turmoil to come.