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(© picture-alliance/dpa)

The official program at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival includes The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band), a German-Austrian-French-Italian co-production by Munich-born Austrian director Michael Haneke.

Backed by the Berlin production company X-Filme Creative Pool, it tells the tale of a school and church choir led by the local teacher in a village in Germany's Protestant North on the eve of the First World War. Strange accidents occur and increasingly assume the character of ritual punishments. Who is behind this?

Haneke won the best director prize at Cannes in 2005 for Caché, and he made a new US version of his eerie Funny Games starring Naomi Watts in 2007.

Tarantino's wartime thriller

Zehnte Babelsberg Film is the German producer of the competition entry from popular American director Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Bastards, a deliberately misspelled US-German co-prodution starring Brad Pitt, Mike Myers and several top European actors, including German superstars Diane Kruger, Til Schweiger and Daniel Brühl.

The film combines the story of the young Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), whose family is killed by the Nazis in occupied France, with that of a group of Jewish-American soldiers on a mission to eliminate the leaders of the Third Reich.

Lars von Trier on grief, secret lives in Israel

Also screening in this year's May 13 to 24 competition is Lars von Trier's Antichrist (Denmark/Germany/France/Sweden/Italy), about a couple in mourning who retreat to an isolated forest cabin after the death of their son. They hope to use this time there to overcome their grief and save their rocky marriage.

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German actor Til Schweiger is depicted on an outsized film poster promoting the Tarantino movie Inglourious Bastards at the Hotel Carlton in Cannes on May 17, 2009.

(© dpa - Report)

The Israeli-French-German co-production Jaffa by Keren Yedaya will meanwhile be shown in a Special Screenings section. This film tells the story of a Jewish woman named Mali and the Arab worker Taufik, whose secret love affair is seriously strained when Mali accidentally gets pregnant.

Eyes Wide Open, another Israeli-French-German co-produciton by Haim Tabakman, is featured in the Un Certain Regard program. It recounts a gay love story in Jerusalem doomed due to social and religious barriers.

Great journeys, human tragedies

Independence (France/Germany/Philippines), by Raya Martin, and The Wind Journeys, (Colombia/Germany/The Netherlands), by Ciro Guerra, can also be seen in this section.

In his film, Martin tells the story of a family in the Philippines during the American occupation at the beginning of the 20th century who retreat into the jungle to escape the fighting. The mountains afford them protection as they revert back to the ways of their ancestors. Yet the war encroaches relentlessly and a vital decision must be made.

The Wind Journeys is the story of the old musician Ignacio, who swears after his wife's death to never touch his beloved accordion ever again. Together with the young Fermin and a donkey, he sets off on a journey to northern Colombia to return his legendary - but also accursed - accordion to his teacher. Their arduous journey leads Ignacio and Fermin through the various (musical) landscapes of Colombia, and Ignacio is routinely forced to play his accordion "just one last time" ...

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German actress Diane Kruger, who played Helen of Troy in the blockbuster Troy (2004), also stars in Tarantino's Inglourious Bastards.

(© dpa - Report)

Also invited to Un Certain Regard is the German-French co-production Le Père de Mes Enfants (The Father of My Children) by Mia Hansen-Løve. A film about commitment, loneliness, love and stoicism, it relates the final weeks of film producer Grégoire Canvel before his suicide and the first weeks of mourning experienced by his wife and their three daughters.

Divided yet linked worlds

The Critics' Week section will meanwhile screen three feature-length and one short film backed by various German production companies.

With a winning mixture of candor and simplicity, Huacho, by Alejandro Fernández Almendras (France/Chile/Germany), describes a day in the life of four members of a peasant family who live on the outskirts of Chillán, in southern Chile.

In Altiplano, by Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth (Belgium/Germany/the Netherlands), a war photographer loses her soul in Iraq and an Andean bride sacrifices herself in a protest against the mining industry. Their fates come together on the Altiplano, a lyrical and probing film about our divided but inextricably linked world.

Lost Persons Area by Caroline Strubbe (Belgium/Netherlands/Hungary/Germany) tells a sensitive story about people lost in their fear of rejection. Two men work together on the maintenance of power lines. They are best friends, with one secretly in love with the other's wife. They live a dull but happy life until an accident changes everything.

And the short Together by Eicke Bettinga (Germany/UK) is about a young man struggling with his brother's early death and its repercussions on his family.

A directors program at Cannes will also screen the Israeli-German co-production Ajami, by Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani - the untold story of the walled-in city of Jaffa, on the outskirts of the Palestenian-Israeli conflict, where violence and hatred are a daily reality.