CANNES is the Harrods of international film festivals. It stocks everything you could possibly want from the rarest continental delicacy to the must-have summer object that will soon be available at every corner store.

In the case of Cannes 2006, that means a programme that ranges from the world premiere of The Da Vinci Code on Wednesday to the eagerly awaited Climates, the latest film from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, which charts a doomed love affair through the backdrop of the changing seasons.

The festival retains its reputation as the most influential on the planet by hosting a programme that consists almost exclusively of world premieres and by refusing to patronise those whose tastes run more towards the latest comic-book adaptation than the new sensation of Iranian cinema.

The entire spectrum of cinema is present at Cannes and this is where every other festival director comes to begin or complete their search for the great and the good. If a film makes waves at Cannes, it will be seen around the world. Careers can be made in the course of a single screening and reputations ruined from an adverse reaction.

The critics in Cannes are never shy: if they don’t like a film they will boo to the rafters and its fate may be sealed. Three years ago Bertrand Blier’s Les Côtelettes was met with waves of hostility. Nobody has heard of it again.

That’s why Cannes matters and that’s why the public seem to have more of an interest in this festival than any of its rivals. That and the supposed glamour presented by the A-list attendance this year alone of Tom Hanks, Penélope Cruz, Cate Blanchett, Ethan Hawke, Gael García Bernal (see page 10), Bruce Willis, Nick Nolte and countless others.

Merely to have a film invited to Cannes is an honour. Any country that finds its national cinema unrepresented in the selections considers it the equivalent of a diplomatic incident. German cinema, for instance, often seems to produce little that pleases the Cannes selectors. There is also something of an ebb and flow in the fortunes of British films; The Magdalene Sisters and Vera Drake were rejected by Cannes and both went on to win the top prize of the Golden Lion at Venice.

Thousands of films are submitted to Cannes in the hope that they will be chosen for one of the 20 slots in competition. The competition titles gain the most prominence as they are the ones that all the serious critics will see and the ones being offered up to judgment by Wong Kar-wai and a jury that includes Monica Bellucci, Samuel L Jackson, Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Roth.

Given all the odds against being accepted by the Cannes selectors, it is a particular triumph that one of the films in competition this year is Red Road, the feature debut of Andrea Arnold, who won an Oscar for her short film Wasp.

Red Road was shot in Glasgow and stars Kate Dickie as a CCTV operator watching over the world. One day she spots a man on the monitors. It is the man who was responsible for her father’s death and she feels compelled to confront him.

The film is the first fruits of Lars von Trier’s Advance Party project in which three filmmakers have each written a feature that incorporates the same nine characters. It is also one of the fruits of tireless Sigma Films producer Gillian Berrie, whose links with Von Trier’s Zentropa Films have been so rewarding for Scotland. Berrie has also just completed principal photography on the David Mackenzie adaptation of Hallam Foe.

The cast list of Red Road includes Natalie Press and Martin Compston. Cannes was where it all began for Compston in 2002 with the screening of Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen and the kind of critical enthusiasm that helped to put the young Scot on the map.

Like Compston, Loach is also back at Cannes this year with The Wind That Shakes The Barley, a tale of Ireland in the 1920s written by Scot Paul Laverty. Cillian Murphy stars as an idealistic young doctor who joins in the fight for freedom against the British. The film will be released here next month.

Loach is one of several Cannes favourites in competition this year alongside Nanni Moretti and his Silvio Berlusconi satire The Caiman, Aki Kaurismäki and a tale of loneliness in the suburbs of Helsinki, Lights In The Dark, and Pedro Almodóvar with Volver, the saga of three generations of women surviving superstition, insanity, fire and death. Penélope Cruz stars with Carmen Maura.

Add to those Sofia Coppola’s stylised biography of Marie-Antoinette with Kirsten Dunst, Gérard Depardieu in Xavier Giannoli’s When I Was A Singer, Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Fast Food Nation, and Southland Tales, a film that writer-director Richard (Donnie Darko) Kelly describes as "part musical, part comedy, part thriller and part science-fiction". The cast includes Sarah Michelle Gellar and The Rock.

On paper this looks like a strong line-up that refutes the notion that the movies are suffering some kind of terminal decline.

Cannes may appear to be a three-ring circus of high art, low commerce and relentless self- promotion, but underneath the red carpet premieres and parties it is an irresistible celebration of the best in world cinema. That’s why we keep returning year after year.

The 59th Cannes International Film Festival runs from Wednesday until May 28