The diversity of this year's jury — five women and four men from seven countries and five continents — makes handicapping the Palme d'Or harder than ever.

• Cate Blanchett

  

  Given Blanchett’s art house bona fides (Thor notwithstanding), the jury president might fall hard for Lazzaro Felice, Alice Rohrwacher’s follow-up to her 2014 Cannes Grand Prix winner, The Wonders.

• Chang Chen

  

  Jia Zhangke’s crime drama Ash Is Purest White sounds like the kind of Asian epic that could appeal to Chen, who’s appeared in the likes of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and John Woo’s Red Cliff.

• Ava DuVernay

  

  The socially conscious DuVernay has cited Spike Lee as an early influence, so expect the provocative helmer’s politically charged BlacKkKlansman to be heavily favored going in.
• Robert Guediguian

  

  Stephane Brize’s At War, a social-realist drama about a factory shutdown, seems tailor-made for Guediguian, a director famed for his portraits of ordinary characters from his home city of Marseille.

• Khadja Nin

  

  With zero film credits, Burundian musician Nin is the biggest question mark this year. Her political activism on behalf of Africa could tip the scales for Abu Bakr Shawky’s Egypt-set road movie Yomeddine.

• Lea Seydoux

  

  French actress Seydoux might be expected to lean toward countrywoman Eva Husson’s Girls of the Sun, about an all-female Kurdish battalion fighting the Islamic State.
• Kristen Stewart

  

  Stewart’s eclectic indie vibe could see her gravitating toward David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake, a neo-noir comedy about an L.A. slacker (Andrew Garfield) in way over his head as an amateur detective.

• Denis Villeneuve

  

  The Canadian helmer of Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 clearly likes a high-end genre film, so expect him to favor Dogman, the urban thriller from Italian mob movie specialist Matteo Garrone.

• Andrey Zvyagintsev

  

  Out of solidarity with his countryman, Zvyagintsev, who scored an Oscar nom this year for Loveless, could vote for Leto, from director Kirill Serebrennikov, who is currently under house arrest in Russia.

  This story first appeared in the May 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.