Leonardo DiCaprio to present Robert De Niro with lifetime achievement award at Cannes

Leonardo DiCaprio will present his frequent co-star Robert De Niro with a lifetime achievement award during the Cannes Film Festival's opening ceremony.

The Titanic actor will bestow the honorary Palme d'Or upon his Killers of the Flower Moon co-star as the French film festival kicks off on Tuesday night.

DiCaprio and De Niro first worked together on the 1993 film This Boy's Life and have since starred alongside each other in 1996's Marvin's Room, a 2015 short called The Audition, and Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, which premiered at Cannes two years ago.

To celebrate the honour, the Raging Bull star will also participate in a masterclass on Wednesday.

When the award was announced in early April, the Oscar-winning actor said in a statement, "I have such close feelings for Festival de Cannes... Especially now when there's so much in the world pulling us apart, Cannes brings us together - storytellers, filmmakers, fans, and friends. It's like coming home."

He follows in the footsteps of previous honorary Palme d'Or recipients including Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Michael Douglas and Harrison Ford, among others.

After the ceremony, the film festival will begin in earnest with this year's opening film, Leave One Day.

Over the next 11 days, movies including Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme, Kristen Stewart's directorial debut The Chronology of Water and Scarlett Johansson's first feature Eleanor The Great will premiere at Cannes.

The winner of this year's competitive Palme d'Or for best film will be decided by the jury president, French actress Juliette Binoche, and her team, which includes Halle Berry and Jeremy Strong.