Cannes Film Festival line-up is announced

The actor and director unveiled their previous film Drive at Cannes in 2011

Only God Forgives, the second film from Drive partnership Ryan Gosling and Nicolas Winding Refn, joins Steven Soderbergh's Liberace biopic in competition at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

Other films in the running for the coveted Palme d'Or include Roman Polanski's Venus In Fur and Inside Llewyn Davis by the Coen brothers.

US director Steven Spielberg is the head of this year's jury.

The festival runs from 15-26 May.

Gosling, currently starring in Beyond The Pines at the UK box office and Refn, who directed the controversial biopic of the "UK's most violent prisoner" Charles Bronson, unveiled their previous film Drive at the film festival in 2011.

The violent thriller was nominated for the Palme d'Or but lost out to Terence Malick's The Tree of Life. However, the film landed Refn the best director trophy.

Michael Douglas steps into the shoes of beloved US entertainer Liberace

Soderbergh, who won Cannes' top prize in 1989 for his film Sex, Lies and Videotape, is back in competition with his eagerly-awaited film Behind the Candelabra, starring Michael Douglas as the flamboyant entertainer Liberace, who masked his homosexuality from public view.

Matt Damon plays his gay lover in the film, made for US cable channel HBO.

James Gray's film The Immigrant, about a young woman tricked into a life of burlesque and vaudeville, stars Jeremy Renner, Joaquin Phoenix and Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard.

Inside Llewyn Davis is the upcoming film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Set in the 1960s, the film about a young folk singer, stars British actress Carey Mulligan and Justin Timberlake.

Alexander Payne, who sat on last year's Palme d'Or jury, is in competition this year with his film Nebraska, about a father and son trekking from the state of Montana to Nebraska to claim some prize money.

Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, who directed Sean Penn as a faded rock star in This Must Be The Place, is in the running with his film The Great Beauty.

Controversial Japanese director Takashi Miike's Straw Shield is a crime-thriller set in modern day politics while Iranian director, Asghar Farhadi - who won an Oscar for his film A Separation - directs The Artist actress Berenice Bejo in his new film The Past.

With other films in competition from Chad, China and Mexico, Cannes president Gilles Jacob said this year's competition reflected "an attitude which, decade in decade out, guarantees the continuing existence of this institution. The idea is one I particularly like, and it sees the festival as a shelter for endangered artists".

Un Certain Regard

Outside of the films screening in competition are a number of other sections.

Harry Potter actress Emma Watson stars in The Bling Ring, the latest film from Sofia Coppola - based on the real-life robberies of celebrity homes in Malibu.

It will screen in the Un Certain Regard event, as will James Franco's latest directorial effort As I Lay Dying.

The film is based on William Faulkner's 1930 stream of consciousness novel, which is narrated by 15 different characters.

Baz Luhrmann's anticipated The Great Gatbsy, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, will open the festival and the closing film is Zulu, a South African cop thriller starring Orlando Bloom and Forest Whittaker.

Jerry Lewis, the US comedy star of the 1950s and 60s, who later poured his efforts into raising money for muscular dystrophy research, will get a special tribute at this year's event.