Grant the Mad Max fans a magic wish and they’d conjure up a new film from George Miller, right here and right now, not a moment to lose.

Now their prayers have been answered, God help them, as Miller arrived at the Cannes film festival to uncork a picture he describes as “the anti-Mad Max”: a loquacious Arabian Nights-style fantasy about the relationship between an ancient genie and a London academic.

Adapted from a 1994 AS Byatt novella, Three Thousand Years of Longing casts Tilda Swinton as Alithea Binnie, a professor of narratology, telling stories about stories.

Three Thousand Years of Longing is guileless, open-hearted, like an antiquarian bookseller’s dream of The Thief of Baghdad.

At the age of 77, flushed from the success of a 50-year career, Miller has earned the right to make whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and to hell with the fans who demand more road warrior movies.

• Three Thousand Years of Longing screened at the Cannes film festival