Loach and Malick head Cannes film festival

PARIS - AFP

Veteran directors Ken Loach and Terrence Malick head the line-up of a "highly political" Cannes film festival next month, its director Thierry Fremaux said April 18.

But the big news was that there was no place -- as yet -- for Quentin Tarantino's much-anticipated "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" starring Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio.             

Fremaux hinted that the maker of "Reservoir Dogs," could still make it, saying, "We can hope that some films may join us that we are all waiting on before May 14" when the festival starts.

Loach, 82, who won the top Palme d'Or prize in 2016 with "I, Daniel Blake," which he then said was his final film, returns with "Sorry We Missed You", an indictment of the gig economy.

The reclusive Malick will premiere his World War II story, "A Hidden Life" about a German conscientious objector guillotined by the Nazis in 1943.

The world's biggest film festival, which sees itself as the "Olympics of cinema," will open on May 14 with cult U.S. director Jim Jarmusch's zombie flick "The Dead Don't Die."