Click here to see Cannes events as they unfold, as told by Our Man in Cannes, FRANCE 24's Arnab Banerjee.

Julianne Moore, Danny Glover and Gael Garcia Bernal — the stars of the Brazilian film “Blindness” — were the first celebrities to walk up the red-carpeted steps at the opening of the Cannes Film Festival.

The thriller by the Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles, which opens the festival, is an adaptation of the novel by the Portuguese Nobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago, who is not attending the ceremony.

French actor and comedian Edouard Baer played host for the opening.

Among the male stars to watch for during the festival are Clint Eastwood, who will present his film “Changeling” (starring Angelina Jolie) on May 21, and Benicio Del Toro, the star of Steven Soderberg’s “Che”. Stephen Spielberg has chosen to bring back Harris Ford as “Indiana Jones” in the fourth installment of the popular series, which premiers at the festival on May 18.

Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz will be on hand for the out-of-competition screening of Woody Allen’s latest movie, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”.

Legendary sporting icons are the subjects of Emir Kusturica’s “Maradona by Kusturica”, presented out of competition, and James Toback’s “Tyson”, which will be screened May 16 as part of the Un Certain Regard competition.

Past winners of the coveted Palme d'Or are returning to Cannes this year. Atom Egoyan presents “Adoration” on May 22. Wim Wenders will show “Palermo Shooting”, and the Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne bring “The Silence of Lorna”.

A new generation of filmmakers will also contribute to Cannes; ten directors will be presenting films in competition for the first time. The Israeli director Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir” is an animated documentary about the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon in 1982. Other first-timers include Jia Zhangke from China and Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter of “Being John Malkovich”.