Baz Luhrmann opens Cannes with The Great Gatsby

The lavish Cannes Film Festival gets underway today with a suitably extravagant opening night film:Baz Luhrmann's big-budget adaptation of The Great Gatsby.

The Cannes kick-off spotlight marks a creative homecoming of sorts for the Australian director, who burst onto the international scene after his first filmthe warm, independent 1992 drama Strictly Ballroomwon a spot in the festival's sidebarUn Certain Regard program, after he struggled to interest movie financiers at home.

Luhrmann recently recalled his first trip to La Croisette.

"A security guard leans over and says to me, 'Monsieur, from this moment on, your life will never been the same again,'" the filmmaker recalled. "That is the beginning of my life in film."

Luhrmann, who later opened the famed French film fest with his 2002 extravaganza Moulin Rouge, returns to the Cannes red carpet onWednesday night with his 3D adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novelwhich earned the prominent slot usually reserved for world premieres.The film has already opened in North America.

• VIDEO: Baz Luhrmann cranks up style for The Great Gatsby

Along with the Gatsby crewincluding Luhrmann, stars Leonardo Di Caprio and Carey Mulligan and soundtrack maestro Jay-Z famous faces set to grace the Cannes red carpet over the next few weeks include Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan, Hollywood heavyweights Michael Douglas, Matt Damon and Ryan Gosling and filmmakers such as Sofia Coppola and Steven Spielberg.

The latter was tapped ashead of this year's main competition jury, which chooses the festival's top honour: the Palme d'Or. His jurors includefellow Oscar-winners Ang Lee, Nicole Kidman and Christoph Waltz.

Steven Soderbergh's Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, Joel and Ethan Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis, Roman Polanski's Venus in Fur and The Past, directed by Iranian Oscar-winner Asghar Farhadi, are amongthe anticipated films screening in competition at Cannes.

Canadian selections include Quebec director Chlo Robichaud's Sarah prfre la course (Sarah Prefers the Race), competing in the innovative Un Certain Regard program, and Saskatoon filmmaker Jefferson Moneo's short film Going South, which is screening in the Cinfondation lineup. Canadian filmmakers are also set to participate in a Telefilm-sponsored program highlighting Canadian projects.

ACannes program screening carefully restored classicswill include Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and the Canadian film The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, based on the Mordecai Richler novel.

The Cannes Film Festival continues through May 26.