Films nominated

A Civil War film by Sofia Coppola, a Ukrainian road movie and a drama about AIDS activism are among the 18 films competing for top prizes this year at the Cannes Film Festival , an international cinema extravaganza that organizers hope can help counter rising nationalist sentiment around the world.

Festival director Thierry Fremaux and President Pierre Lescure on Thursday announced a lineup that includes Cannes’ first virtual-reality entry, tackles topics from animal cruelty to the migrant crisis and offers four chances to see Nicole Kidman onscreen.

Contenders for the top Palme d’Or prize at the 70th Cannes festival include Coppola’s spooky Civil War drama “The Beguiled,” starring Kidman and Kirsten Dunst; American director Noah Baumbach’s family saga “The Meyerowitz Stories,” starring Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler; and fellow American Todd Haynes’ 1920s-set drama “Wonderstruck.”

Also aiming to impress a competition jury headed by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar are “Okja,”a fantasy thriller with an animal-rights theme by South Korea’s Bong Joon-ho starring Tilda Swinton; French director Michel Hazanavicius’ tribute to the French New Wave, “Le Redoutable”; sex-trafficking drama “You Were Never Really Here” from Britain’s Lynne Ramsay; and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” a thriller from Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos starring Kidman and Colin Farrell.

Kidman also appears at Cannes in John Cameron Mitchell’s out-of-competition entry “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” and in Jane Campion’s TV crime drama “Top of the Lake.”