FILMS by veteran directors Clint Eastwood, Steven Soderbergh and Wim Wenders will line up with fresher, lesser-known talent to vie for the top prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, organizers said Wednesday.

    Cannes’ mix of old and new, of Hollywood glitz and auteur fare, has proven a recipe for success as the film industry’s biggest annual festival gears up for its 61st edition from May 14 to 25.

    “With the festival ushering in a new decade, we wanted to renew and refocus our choice,” festival president Gilles Jacob said at a news conference. “There are films that are hair-raising because they break new ground.”

    After viewing 1,792 films from 96 countries, organizers selected 19 movies to compete for the prestigious Palme d’Or that winds up the annual 12-day extravaganza of showbiz parties, red-carpet screenings and wheeling and dealing.

    When a final 20th film from France is announced in the coming days, the countdown per continent will be Asia (3), Europe (7), South America (3), the United States (3), and a film each from Israel, Canada and Turkey.

    Much-awaited also are the movies selected to be screened out of competition and getting their world release, including the latest from top-name directors Woody Allen and Spielberg.

    Spielberg will be bringing the year’s most-awaited movie, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” — the fourth installment in the box office-busting series starring Harrison Ford as the archaeologist adventurer who had his first outing way back in 1981 “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

    Allen, a longstanding favorite at the Cannes film festival, brings his Spanish-set “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” along with its stars Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem for a walk up the red carpet.

    Eastwood’s “The Changeling” is a thriller set in the 1920s starring Angelina Jolie as a mother grieving for a kidnapped son.

    With a heavy dose of social reality and politics in store for festival-goers, one ground-breaker is expected to be Israel’s “Waltz with Bashir” by Ari Folman, an anime documentary set in Beirut.

    Soderbergh, best known for his Ocean’s movies, will be presenting a four-hour two-part movie entitled “Che” about the revolutionary hero’s life and times that stars Benicio Del Toro, who played in the director’s 2000 “Traffic.”

    Also on the social-cum-political front, Germany’s Wenders is showing a road-movie titled “The Palermo Shooting,” while Italy’s crime families and its former prime minister Giulio Andreotti are the focus of films respectively by Italians Matteo Garrone and Paolo Sorrentino.

    Heading the jury that will deliver the top honors is one-time Hollywood bad boy Sean Penn, the Oscar-winning U.S. actor-turned-director who most recently helmed the critically acclaimed 2007 drama “Into the Wild.”

    “The Cannes Film Festival has long been the epicenter in the discovery of new waves of filmmakers,” Penn said on being named earlier this year. “I very much look forward to participating.”(SD-Agencies)

   2008 Cannes line-up 

   Competition

    “Three Monkeys”

    (Turkey-France-Italy)

    “Le Silence de Lorna”

    (Belgium-France-Italy-Germany)

    “A Christmas Story” (France)

    “The Changeling” (U.S.)

    “Adoration” (Canada)

    “Waltz With Bashir”

    (Israel-France-Germany)

    “La Frontiere de L’Aube” (France)

    “Gomorra” (Italy)

    “Synecdoche, New York” (U.S.)

    “My Magic” (Singapore)

    “La Mujer Sin Cabeza”

    (Argentina-Spain)

    “Serbis” (The Philippines)

    “Delta” (Hungary-Germany)

    “Linha de Passe” (Brazil)

    “Il Divo” (Italy)

    “Leonera” (Argentina-South Korea)

    “The Palermo Shooting”

    (Germany-Italy)

    “24 City” (China)

    “Che” (U.S.-Spain-France)

    Out of competition

    “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom

    of the Crystal Skull” (U.S.)

    “Kung Fu Panda” (U.S.)

    “The Good, the Bad, the Weird”

    (South Korea)

    “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” (Spain-U.S.)