France entered the competition of this 57th edition with Look at Me (Comme une image) from director Agnès Jaoui, a film that belittles power and fame. Another female director was honoured, Lucrecia Martel from Argentina presented The Holy Girl (La Niña Santa), a film that deals with religious and love constraints and choices. Quentin Tarantino took a break from jury duty to present Kill Bill: Volume 2 out of competition, accompanied by Uma Thurman and David Carradine.

Three other events punctuated the day on the Croisette: the studio meetings during which French Minister of Culture and Communication Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres and President of MPAA Jack Valenti addressed the problems of audiovisual piracy, the Grand Prix DVD – Cannes Festival 2004 bestowed to Sylvie Pialat for the complete Maurice Pialat DVD set, and finally the opening film presentation of Bye Bye Brazil by Carlos Diegues kicking off the Brazilian cinema tribute.

As for Un Certain Regard, three new films enter the competition: Italian actor/director Sergio Castellitto's dramatic film Don't Move (Non Ti Muovere) starring Penelope Cruz, the Ecuadorian Sebastián Cordero presented his thriller Crónicas and Hungarian Nimród Antal's Kontroll which chronicles the daily life in the Budapest underground.