The standout movies at this year’s festival.

“When I jumped off a roof in Cannes in a bee costume, I looked ridiculous. But this is my business,” remembers Mr Jerry Seinfeld of one night at Europe’s premiere film festival and pre-eminent party. But despite its reputation for public displays of absurdity (it’s where Mr Sacha Baron Cohen debuted his Borat mankini, for example), Cannes is the first stop for groundbreaking new cinema. Launched in 1946, Cannes is known for awarding its highest trophy, the Palme d’Or, to films tragically overlooked at the Oscars — from Mr Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver to Mr Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages Of Fear. Ahead of festivities along the boulevard de la Croisette this week, here are five films to watch out for.

Inspired by the transgressively sex-positive Belle Du Jour, this Syria-set drama tells the story of a young woman who falls in with the owner of a brothel. There, hiding from an impending arranged marriage and the backdrop of war, she finds pleasure and self-discovery as a sexual voyeur. A film that finds quietude in perversion, writer-director Ms Gaya Jiji’s My Favourite Fabric is a bold, statement-making directorial debut.

Surveying a love story across 16 years, Ash Is Purest White sees a young woman jailed for defending her lover during a mob-fight in China’s guttural gangland. Considered a leading auteur of China’s sixth-wave film movement, director Mr Jia Zhangke continues his time-stretching storytelling style, a technique he perfected in 2015’s past-present-future drama, Mountains May Depart. This time around, Mr Zhangke skips years to explore the mysteries of love, betrayal and transcendent courage.

The second feature film by esteemed Italian actress-director Ms Valeria Golino, Euphoria is about two estranged brothers forced together under dramatic circumstances.  Famed for her roles in Rain Man and the Hot Shots! films, Ms Golino’s follow-up to 2013’s Honey explores bravado and politics between loved ones — the sticky and delicate familial tensions we can all relate to. The well-received Honey won Ms Golino a Prize of the Ecumenical Jury (Special Mention) at Cannes’ 66th ceremony – and anticipation is high for her follow-up.

A screenplay 12 years in the penning, writer-director Mr Matteo Garrone’s gritty modern-day western is inspired by a real-life homicide committed by a dog groomer in 1980s Rome. Dogman tells the story of a much gentler pet owner, who exacts revenge on a former boxer who haunts a run-down Italian village. A return to realism after Mr Garrone’s praised, Ms Selma Hayek-helmed fantasy Tale Of Tales, it’s a modern twist on the Mr Sergio Leone template, where small-town politics reaches a tense and visceral head.

A toss-up between Mr Robert Altman’s surreally star-studded neo noir The Player and The Vanishing, Mr Andrew Garfield searches for his disappeared neighbour (Ms Riley Keough) who he fears is linked to a murdered businessman. All eyes are on writer-director Mr David Robert Mitchell, whose last film It Follows heralded a new age of tasteful horror — careful filmmaking your average Cannes cineaste can sink their teeth into. Produced by Moonlight Oscar winner Ms Adele Romanski, Under The Silver Lake is possibly the festival’s hottest ticket this year.