Stars and glamor returned to the French Riviera on Tuesday as the 74th edition of the Cannes Film Festival kicked off after a two-year absence.

The world's biggest film festival was cancelled last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and this year's affair will be slightly more subdued, with fewer attendees and parties over the 12-day whirlwind of film premieres.

However, plenty of stars still graced the red carpet at Cannes' Palais des Festivals on the opening day of the event.

Among them were Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, the stars of Leos Carax's film "Annette" which opened the festival, actress Jessica Chastain, and veteran Hollywood actress and director Jodie Foster, recipient of this year's honorary Palme d'Or.

The festival was later opened by U.S. director Spike Lee, who heads this year's festival jury, alongside Foster, Spanish director Pedro Almodovar and South Korean director Bong Joon-ho, winner of the 2019 Palme d'Or for "Parasite."

In all, 24 films will be competing for the festival's top prize. The event runs until July 17.

More women on the jury, and a Black president

Spike Lee, the Oscar-winning director of "BlacKkKlansman," is the first Black person to be a jury president at Cannes.

And this year's jury also has women outnumbering men, with five women on the nine-strong panel: French actress-director Melanie Laurent, U.S. actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, French director Mati Diop, Austrian director Jessica Hausner and French singer Mylene Farmer.

Their male colleagues include Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonca Filho, French actor Tahar Rahim and South Korean actor Song Kang-ho.

Cannes, along with rival showcases like the Venice Film Festival, has long come under scrutiny over the low number of women directors in the running for top awards or in positions of influence.

Only one woman has won the Palme d'Or in 73 editions of the festival – Jane Campion for "The Piano" in 1993. And out of the 24 vying for the top prize this year, only four were directed by women.

However, the number of female directors present in other parallel events and competitions has increased, organizers said.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Laurent said she dreamed of a time when female representation would no longer be newsworthy in the cinema industry. "My dream would be for this to be the first and last festival where there is a debate about women," she said.

Diop, whose debut feature "Atlantics" won a top award at Cannes in 2019, was less optimistic: "I don't know if in our lifetime we'll get to the stage when we'll no longer have to put 'woman' before 'director'.”

24 films

Among the films competing for the Palme d'Or are works by Cannes favorites and previous winners such as Jacques Audiard with "Paris 13th District," Nanni Moretti with "Tre Piani" and Thailand's Apichatpong Weerasethakul with his English-language debut "Memoria."

Other top contenders include Wes Anderson with "The French Dispatch," Sean Penn with "Flag Day," Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi with "A Hero," Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov with "Petrov's Flu" and France's Francois Ozon with "Tout s'est Bien Passe."

(With input from AFP, Reuters)