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“The festival of Cannes places its 60th edition under the sign of modernity and renewal,” declares the official program of the event. There might be a better way of translating that mission statement, but you can't miss the tone of royal superiority. The queen of film festivals acknowledges her slightly advancing age, and grabs the mace with new resolve.

This year's diamond-anniversary milestone is also a reminder that Cannes has a past and, something most film festivals can't claim, a sense of destiny.

As the mayor of Cannes wrote in his introduction to this year's catalogue, Cannes was “chosen to revive the freedom of expression that the dark years of the war had taken away.”

Though Cannes often claims to be a media event exceeded only by the Olympics and the World Cup, in reality other events may draw bigger crowds (the Toronto International Film Festival, for example) or be even more commercially significant.

Even the lowly Golden Globes attracts as many stars, but no other film event has such audacious self-importance in its judicious blend of celebrity flash and quality filmmaking.

Tonight's opening film, My Blueberry Nights, brings both worlds together, with acclaimed Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai (In the Mood for Love) offering his first English-language feature, a road movie starring singer Norah Jones, along with Natalie Portman and Jude Law.

Looking down the list, there are lots of names of films in the official selection, and there's plenty for the cinema lover to relish: Wong, Aleksandr Sokurov, Emir Kusturica, Gus Van Sant, Bela Tarr, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Catherine Breillat, Quentin Tarantino and Joel and Ethan Cohen. Quebec director Denys Arcand's Days of Darkness will bring the festival to a close.

For celebrity watchers, there are enough beautiful people walking around the Croisette to keep a tabloid photographer employed for the next year: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and Al Pacino come into town to launch Ocean's Thirteen, in the last few days of the festival. Leonardo DiCaprio will bring his new environmental documentary, The 11th Hour; Angelina Jolie will launch Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart, about Daniel Pearl's widow. U2 singer Bono is expected to show up for the screening of a new concert film. Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock will show clips from the upcoming DreamWorks comedy Bee Movie. Law, Portman and Jones will be on hand to talk about My Blueberry Nights.

Instead of a blowout, Cannes has chosen to celebrate with a modesty becoming to its mature age. At the centre of the special events is the May 20 screening of a mini-festival of 35 three-minute films about going to the cinema, entitled To Each His Own Cinema. The directors comprise a who's who of international filmmakers – Ken Loach, Lars von Trier, Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu, Tsai Ming Liang and Canada's David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan.

At the end of it all, the jury will pick some films to reward. Some of those films may go on to further fame, though historically just as many may not even receive a major release. To the perennial frustration of the Hollywood studios and often to its well-trained critics, Cannes remains wonderfully unpredictable.

This year's jury, led by Stephen Frears (The Queen), and including Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk and Canadian actress-director Sarah Polley, will look at 22 movies from around the world and pick their favourite.

The jury's criteria may be artistic, or sentimental or political, but they won't have anything to do with the movie's opening weekend's box office. At the beginning of another summer blockbuster season, that seems like a rare kind of freedom of expression.