French actress Anouk Aimée, who starred in Claude Lelouch's 1966 Acacdemy Award-winner A Man And A Woman, will chair the jury of the France Culture prize, to be awarded during the Cannes film festival.

The prize, which crowns both a French and a foreign 'film-maker of the year' is to be announced on the day before the closing ceremony.

French film-makers likely to be in the running for the prize include Jacques Audiard (Sur Mes Levres), Laurent Cantet (L'Emploi Du Temps), Anne Fontaine (Comment J'ai Tue Mon Pere) Jean-François Stévenin (Mischka), Mathieu Amalric (Le Stade De Wimbledon), Jean-Paul Civeyrac (Fantomes and Le Doux Amour Des Hommes) and Alain Guiraudie (Ce Vieux Reve Qui Bouge).

Fireign contenders include China's Jia Zhang-Ke (Platform), Portugal's Pedro Costa (In Vanda's Room), Japan's Nobuhiro Suwa (H. Story) Spain's Marc Recha (Pau And His Brother), Kazakhstan's Darezhan Omirbayev (Jol) and Hungary's Bela Tarr (Werckmeister Harmonies).