‘Great Gatsby’ opens Cannes Film Festival

PARIS - Agence France-Presse

Carey Mulligan and Leonardo Di Caprio play the leading roles in the film.

“The Great Gatsby,” with Leonardo di Caprio starring in a remake of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel will open the 66th Cannes Film Festival, the organizers announced on March 12.

The film, screened out of competition, will be shown on May 15, coinciding with its launch across France.

Cannes, widely rated as the world’s top film festival, climaxes on May 26 with awards selected by a jury headed this year by Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg.

Set on the U.S. East Coast during the Roaring Twenties, “Gatsby” stars di Caprio as Fitzgerald’s mysterious millionaire, battling to win the heart of a girl he courted in his youth.

The film was scripted by Australian director Baz Luhrman and his long-time co-screenwriter Craig Pearce. It will be shown in 3D, for the second time in the festival’s history, after the animated picture “Up” in 2009.

Luhrmann, 50, is a familiar figure at Cannes, where he has been twice honored, for “Strictly Ballroom” in 1992 and “Moulin Rouge!” in 2001. He said he was thrilled to return to the Riviera city.

“F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote some of the most poignant and beautiful passages of his extraordinary novel just a short distance away, at a villa outside St. Raphael,” he said in a statement.