A familiar figure in a leather jacket looms over the lineup for the Cannes Film Festival.

Indiana Jones may not be in the running for the prestigious Palme d’Or but his return in the year’s most eagerly awaited blockbuster has overshadowed a strong official roster that features new work from directors Clint Eastwood, Steven Soderbergh, Wim Wenders, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Walter Salles.

No British films have been selected to compete for the coveted prize, despite Britain claiming the top two honours at Cannes in 2006 with The Wind that Shakes the Barley and Red Road.

The world’s most important film festival has frequently championed wilfully obscure, intellectual movies during its 62-year history and the tastes of the jury chairman Sean Penn are particularly eclectic.

Last year the top prize went to the gripping Romanian drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days – an almost unwatchably harrowing tale of backstreet abortion in communist Bucharest.

But Cannes has also been in thrall to glamour ever since Brigitte Bardot posed in a bikini on the beach in 1953.

Mike Gubbins, editor of Screen International, said that the presence of a Hollywood blockbuster is a Cannes fixture. “It’s become tradition to sit in the bar at four in the morning moaning about how the festival has sold out, but these films are of course the perfect foil to the heavy fare elswhere.”

This year for all the combined star wattage of Eastwood, Penn, Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, Penélope Cruz, Benicio del Toro, Scarlett Johansson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Mike Tyson and Diego Maradona, who are all expected to attend, it is the world premiere of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that is likely to stir up the biggest frenzy among the 30,000 film industry representatives who will descend on the Riviera between May 14 and May 25. Nineteen years after he last flexed his bullwhip in anger, Harrison Ford returns as the adventurous archaeologist with a fear of snakes and a flair for smart one-liners. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the first three films in the series, grossed $1.2 billion at the global box office between 1981 and 1989.

Indiana Jones’s creator and executive producer, George Lucas, and the films’ director Steven Spielberg have between them made 13 of the top 100 grossing movies. Whether they can repeat the trick with the fourth film hinges on their lead actor – who is now 65 – according to Nick James, editor of Sight and Sound magazine. “It’s about whether or not we can buy Harrison Ford still doing this stuff,” he said. “Can you revive a franchise this long after the event? Probably you can, because a lot of people won’t be able to resist.”

Twenty films have been selected to compete for the Palme d’Or after the organisers viewed 1,792 films from 96 countries. There are three each from Asia, Latin America and the United States, seven from Europe and one each from Israel, Canada and Turkey.

They include Eastwood’s Changeling, a thriller set in the 1920s, starring Angelina Jolie as a mother grieving for a kidnapped son, and Soderbergh’s two-part epic Cheabout the revolutionary hero. Out-of-competition films include Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona and a clutch of high-profile documentaries including an Emir Kusturica film about Maradona, a film about Tyson by James Toback and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired by Marina Zenovich.

British competitive involvement is restricted to one short film. Love You More is directed by the artist Sam Taylor-Wood, from a script by Patrick Marber, and produced by the late Anthony Minghella. Films by Terence Davies and Thomas Clay are showing out of competition during the fortnight and the UK Film Council is expecting that other British films will be added to the lineup later this week.

Chasing the credits

24 City Jia Zhangke (China)
Adoration Atom Egoyan (Canada)
Changeling Clint Eastwood (US)
The Argentine and Guerrilla, a Che Guevara double bill, Steven Soderbergh (Spain)
Un Conte de noel Arnaud Desplechin (France)
Daydreams Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey)
Delta Kornel Mundruczo (Hungary)
Il Divo Paolo Sorrentino (Italy)
Gomorra Matteo Garrone (Italy)
La Frontière de l'aube Philippe Garrel (France)
Leonera Pablo Trapero (Argentina)
Linha de Passe Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas (Brazil)
La Mujer sin cabeza Lucrecia Martel (Argentina)
My Magic Eric Khoo (Singapore)
The Palermo Shooting Wim Wenders (Germany)
Serbis Brillante Mendoza (Philippines)
The Silence of Lorna Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne (Belgium)
Synecdoche, New York Charlie Kaufman (US)
Waltz With Bashir Ari Folman (Israel)

— Organisers said a third French film would be on the competition list but it has not been announced yet

Source: UK Film Council

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