Quentin Tarantino and Abdellatif Kechiche to compete for Golden Palm

The Cannes Film Festival has added a new title to its top prize line-up, the much-awaited Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, directed by Quentin Tarantino. Earlier the Festival had said they thought the film, starring Brad Pitt and Leonardo di Caprio with Margot Robbie, wouldn't be ready.

US film director Quentin Tarantino (Photo : Reuters)

US director Tarantino is reported to have spent four months editing the 35mm film non-stop to have it ready for an international-debut-screening at Cannes.

In two hours and 45 minutes, Once upon a Time in Hollywood tells the story of a Hollywood stunt double set in the late 1960s. Festival director Thierry Frémaux described it as "a love letter to the Hollywood of his childhood, a rock music tour of 1969, and an ode to cinema as a whole."

Margot Robbie plays actress-model Sharon Tate in the film. Tate was murdered by members of the Charles Manson cult. But this, say producers, is not the subject of the film.

25 years ago, Tarantino won the Palme d'Or for Pulp Fiction. This entered cinema history for John Travolta and Uma Thurman's captivating dance scene. It also contained some memorable shock-humour images where Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson played wild, callous and yet extremely cool hitmen.

One of the veterans competing along with Tarantino at Cannes this year, is Terrence Malick. Several of the actors who featured in Tarantino's 2009 Inglourious Basterds, play in Malick's Palme d'Or entry. A Hidden Life is, about an Austrian conscientious objector during World War Two, August Diehl, Alexander Fehling and Martin Wuttke.

21 today

Taking the total Palme d'Or list to 21, the festival has also added, Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo by Abdellatif Kechiche.

Frémaux said "the director has said it will run for four hours."

The film will be screen near the end of the festival whose awards' ceremony is set for 25 May to give Franco-Tunisian Kechiche time to finish a digital version. The director won the Palme in 2013 with his more than three-hour long gay love story, Blue is the Warmest Colour.

The festival describes the film as an extraordinary portrait of youth in the 1990s.

Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo isa sequel to Mekhtoub, My Love: Canto Uno with the same cast including, Shain Boumedine, Ophelie Bau, Salim Kechiouche.