Cannes 2014: competition presents Mike Leigh v Ken Loach showdown

With the announcement of the lineup at this year's Cannes film festival, the stage is set for a showdown between perhaps the two most venerable British directors working today. In the red corner: Ken Loach, presenting his final feature film, Jimmy's Hall. And in the blue: Mike Leigh, whose biopic of the painter JMW Turner had been tipped by many to premiere at Venice later in the summer, but was today revealed to be debuting on the Croisette.

Leigh's film, Mr Turner, will compete with Loach's Jimmy's Hall for the Palme d'Or. A biopic of JMW Turner that stars Timothy Spall, it could feasibly prevent Loach from winning his second Palme d'Or. Jimmy's Hall – a drama about the Irish political activist James Gralton – is said to be Loach's last feature.

The competition lineup, which includes 18 films, will also feature new work from David Cronenberg, Jean-Luc Godard, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan and French film-maker Olivier Assayas.

Godard will present Goodbye to Language, his first film in Cannes since 2010's Film Socialisme. Thierry Frémaux announced that the rambunctious, 83-year-old director, a star of La Nouvelle Vague movement, was expected to attend the screening of his film, although "that doesn't mean he'll be there". The director was absent from the festival in 2010, though had previously announced he would make an appearance.

Cronenberg's film, Maps to the Stars, is billed as a satire on modern Hollywood in the mold of Robert Altman's The Player. It stars Robert Pattinson alongside Mia Wasikowska, Julianne Moore and Carrie Fisher. Pattinson and Cronenberg were last in Cannes in 2012 with their Don DeLillo adaptation Cosmopolis.

Other premieres include Olivier Assayas's Sils Maria, another example of film industry self-reflection. Kick-Ass lead Chloë Grace Moretz will play a starlet driving Juliette Binoche's aging actor to distraction by reinterpreting a part that her character famous.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, winner of the grand prix for his Once Upon a Time in Anatolia in 2011, will return with Winter Sleep, though he has remained tight-lipped about the film's plot. It is, according to the film-maker, "about humans" at least.

The Homesman, the second film directed by actor Tommy Lee Jones, will also be in the running. A sparse western starring Hilary Swank as the custodian of three mentally ill women, it features a role for Jones himself as the rogueish cowboy entrusted with guiding them across the American mid-west.

Steve Carell, known for his comedy roles in The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Anchorman and the Despicable Me movies, takes a turn to the darkside with Foxcatcher, the new drama from Moneyball director Bennett Miller. Based on a true story, the film tells the story of eccentric millionaire John Eleuthère du Pont (Carell) and his relationship with a pair of Olympic wrestling champions, which eventually led to murder.

The competition finds room for two female directors this year. Alice Rohrwacher, the Italian director of Corpo Celeste, brings her new drama, Le Meraviglie (loosely translated as The Marvel). She's joined by Japanese film-maker Naomi Kawase, who has submitted Futatsume no Mado (Still the Water), a romance centering on two teenagers isolated on a remote island.

Further highlights include Michel Hazanavicius's follow-up to The Artist, The Search. A Chechnya-set remake of the 1948 Oscar winner, it stars Hazanavicius's wife, Bérénice Bejo, and Annette Bening. Also screening will be the Dardennes brothers' Two Days, One Night, a thriller in which Marion Cotillard has 48 hours to convince her workmates to give up their pay so she can keep her job, and Atom Egoyan's The Captive, starring Ryan Reynolds and Rosario Dawson.

Woody Allen is among those omitted from the competition this year. A Cannes favourite, the director was rumoured to be bringing Magic in the Moonlight, a new comedy drama that stars Colin Firth and Emma Stone and was shot in the south of France. Swedish director Roy Andersson also missed out. His new film, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, will not be screened in Cannes. Birdman, a meta-superhero story directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and starring Michael Keaton, will not be winging it to the Croisette, while Thomas Vinterberg's version of Far from the Madding Crowd was reportedly not finished in time to make an appearance.

Robert Pattinson will also appear in The Rover, a new film from Animal Kingdom director David Michôd, which features in the festival's midnight screenings strand. The Salvation, a Danish western co-starring Mads Mikkelsen and footballer turned actor Eric Cantona, is also playing in the late night slot.

Out of competition slots are reserved for director Zhang Yimou's Coming Home, which looks back at China's cultural revolution, and How to Train Your Dragon 2, the sequel to Dreamworks Animation's hit family film about a Norse teenager's attempts to befriend a mythic winged beast.

Meanwhile, Ryan Gosling will return to Cannes with his directorial debut, Lost River (retitled from How to Catch a Monster), which plays in Un Certain Regard. Written and directed by Gosling, it stars Saoirse Ronan, Christina Hendricks and former Doctor Who Matt Smith as characters inhabiting the fantasy world of a disturbed young man.

Other highlights of the second strand include Mathieu Amalric's The Blue Room and Salt of the Earth, a documentary about the photographer Sebastião Salgado by director Wim Wenders. Wenders will also present a restoration of his Palme d'Or winner, Paris, Texas, which screens to celebrate 30 years since its release.

Further additions to the line-up are expected in the coming days. The 67th Cannes film festival opens on 14 May with the world premiere of Grace of Monaco, a biopic of the princess directed by La Vie en Rose film-maker Olivier Dahan and starring Nicole Kidman. Frémaux, addressing the recent spat between Dahan and producer Harvey Weinstein over final cut of the film, said Cannes would present Grace of Monaco "as the director intended".

The films in competition at Cannes 2014

Opening night film: Grace of Monaco, dir: Olivier Dahan
Clouds of Sils Maria, dir: Olivier Assayas

Saint Laurent, dir: Bertrand Bonello

Kış Uykusu (Winter Sleep), dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Deux Jours, Une Nuit (Two Days, One Night), dir: Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne
Mommy, dir: Xavier Dolan

The Captive, dir: Atom Egoyan

Adieu au Langage (Goodbye to Language), dir: Jean-Luc Godard

The Search, dir: Michel Hazanavicius
Maps to the Stars, dir: David Cronenberg

The Homesman, dir: Tommy Lee Jones

Futatsume no Mado (Still the Water), dir: Naomi Kawase
Mr Turner, dir: Mike Leigh

Jimmy's Hall, dir: Ken Loach

Foxcatcher, dir: Bennett Miller

Le Meraviglie (The Wonders), dir: Alice Rohrwacher
Timbuktu, dir: Abderrahmane Sissako
Relatos Salvajes (Wild Stories), dir: Damián Szifron
Leviafan, dir: Andrey Zvyagintsev