The 48th annual edition of the Cannes Film Festival’s lauded Directors’ Fortnight section has announced its line up. The section is a non-competitive sidebar. Last year’s winners included “My Golden Days,” “Mustang” and “Embrace of the Serpent.”

The lineup this year will spotlight a trio of films from a multi-generational and multi-faceted range of Italo auteurs: Marco Bellocchio’s “Sweet Dreams,” Paolo Virzi’s “Like Crazy” and Claudio Giovannesi’s “Fiore.” “Sweet Dreams” will open the section, which runs from May 12 to 22.

A brace of features will carry the North American flag: Paul Schrader’s “Dog Eat Dog,” which closes Directors’ Fortnight; Canadian entries “Mean Dreams” and “Two Lovers and a Bear”; and Laura Poitras’ Julian Assange-focused documentary “Risk.”

As per tradition, Directors’ Fortnight also showcases an adult-skewed animated feature, “My Life as a Courgette,” Claude Barras’ debut which is based on Gilles Paris’ novel.

2016 DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT LINEUP

OPENER

Marco Bellocchio

Marco Bellocchio

“Sweet Dreams” (Marco Bellocchio, Italy). Bellochio’s Berenice Bejo starrer is about a boy struggling to come to terms with his mother’s death.

“Divines” (Uda Benyamina, French). This feature debut from a rising French-Moroccan multi-talent (who writes, directs and acts) focuses on a young Arab woman who deals drugs in the Les Pyramides ghetto outside Paris.

“Endless Poetry” (Alejandro Jodorowsky, Chile-Japan-France). The 87-year-old auteur’s latest feature recounts his young adulthood in a bohemian Santiago de Chile and his breakthrough as a poet.

“Fiore” (Claudio Giovannesi, Italy). The third feature by young director Giovannesi, is a romancer set in a Southern Italian juvenile detention center where sexes aren’t supposed to mix.

“L’economie du couple” (Joachim Lafosse, France-Belgium). The Belgian director’s intimate drama centers on a husband and wife who break up and decide to continue sharing the same roof for financial reasons.

“L’effet aquatique” (Solveig Anspach, France). This French drama examines a relationship based on a lie, as a Montreuil construction worker falls for a local swimmer, signing up for lessons at the local pool as a pretext to get her attention.

“Like Crazy” (Paolo Virzi, Italy). This Italian film follows two mental patients who escape their institution, their subsequent encounters blurring the lines between sanity and insanity.

“Mean Dreams” (Nathan Morlando, Canada). Morlando’s sophomore outing is a tense thriller starring Sophie Nélisse and Josh Wiggins as two youngsters who escape abusive homes. Bill Paxton star as a corrupt local cop.

“Mercenaire” (Sacha Wolff, France). Wolff makes his feature debut, which follows six weeks in the life of a young South Pacific immigrant who joins a French rugby team.

“My Life as a Courgette” (Claude Barras, France). Adapted from Gilles Paris’ novel by Celine Sciamma,  this stop-motion movie relates the story of a boy who’s taken away from his abusive alcoholic mother and put into a group home, where he tries to find his place among the other misfit kids.

“Neruda” (Pablo Larrain, Chile-France-Spain-Argentina). One of Latin America’s biggest titles of 2016, the manhunt drama “Neruda” captures the Nobel Prize winner over 1946-’48, on the run and hounded by a dogged police inspector (Gael Garcia Bernal).

“Pyscho Raman” (Anurag Kashyap, India). Following “Ugly,” the director-producer responsible for a flurry of movies that have played in Cannes in recent years — most notably his two-part “Gangs of Wasseypur” — returns to Directors’ Fortnight with this psychological thriller starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui as the infamous serial killer Raman Raghav.

“Risk” (Laura Poitras, U.S.). The Oscar-winning director of “Citizenfour” turns her camera on another controversial figure, WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, in this immersive documentary, which continues Poitras’ courageous examination of voices who question authority in an era of ever-increasing surveillance and paranoia.

“Tour de France” (Rachid Djaidani, France). This drama talks about the unlikely friendship between an aging bigot (played by Gerard Depardieu) and a young rap singer who are forced to embark on a road trip across France.

“Two Lovers and a Bear” (Kim Nguyen, Canada). Set nearly as far north as one can possibly go in Canada, this indie relationship story stars Dane DeHaan and Tatiana Maslany as Roman and Lucy, a couple of lonely hearts seeking connection in a remote Nunavut town.

“Les Vies de Therese” (Sebastien Lifshitz, France). A look at the life and impact of French feminist Therese Clerc, whom Lifshitz included as a character in his Cesar-winning 2012 documentary “The Invisible Ones,” about elderly gay and lesbian couples.

CLOSING NIGHT

Paul Schrader

Paul Schrader

“Dog Eat Dog” (Paul Schrader, U.S.). Based on the gritty book by ex-con novelist Edward Bunker, this late-career film noir is from the writer of “Taxi Driver”. The project reteams Schrader with Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe, who play once-incarcerated acquaintances torn between the prospect of a normal life and the temptation of one last con.