Cannes 2012: Nicole Kidman set to shine The festival opens tomorrow with Bruce Willis playing a small-town sheriff searching for a pair of eloping 12-year-olds in Moonrise Kingdom. Set in 1965 and directed by Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums), it shows a group of adult oddballs hunting for the underage lovebirds on an island off the New England coast. Moonrise Kingdom is one of two dozen titles vying for the Cannes top prize, the Palme d'Or, to be handed out on May 27. "It takes you into a completely new world from the first page," Tilda Swinton, who plays a character called Social Services, says in the film notes. In this story, our community of adults doesn't really know what they're doing, and in the process find themselves to be no less childlike, and no more grown-up, than the two children. Picking the winners will be the job of a nine-person jury steered by Italian director Nanni Moretti ("Dear Diary") and including actor Ewan McGregor and couturier Jean-Paul Gaultier. This year, there are five U.S. contestants in the official race, which is usually dominated by European and world auteurs. One contender for the Palme d'Or is Killing Them Softly, starring Brad Pitt and James Gandolfini. Pitt plays a rifle-wielding enforcer who is assigned to probe a robbery committed during a mob poker game. This year's festival is the 65th of its kind. The first Cannes Festival took place in 1946, a year after World War II ended. Among the event's earliest award winners were directors Orson Welles, Luis Bunuel, Ingmar Bergman and Satyajit Ray. Follow Telegraph Film on Twitter.