Sunbathers lined the beaches in Cannes yesterday as an army of film festival staff put dozens of security barriers in position and laid out the red carpet that stretches from the street up the steps of the Festival Palais. Michael Dwyer, Film Correspondent, in Cannes
The world's biggest film festival, Cannes turns 60 this year with an extensive programme. The special anniversary has attracted the largest number of visitors in the event's history - more than 20,000 producers, directors, distributors, sales agents and journalists.
The 12-day festival offers a curious mix of art and commerce, with the official selection aimed at cineastes and the crowded market jammed with mainstream fare seeking distribution deals around the world.
The event set an appropriately international tone when it opened last night with Chinese director Wong Kar-wai's first US production, My Blueberry Nights, a road movie starring Jude Law and, in her acting debut, singer Norah Jones.
Cannes, as ever, thrives on controversy, as does US filmmaker Michael Moore, who won the Palme d'Or at the 2004 festival with Fahrenheit 9/11.He returns to Cannes on Saturday with his new documentary, Sicko,which takes a critical view of US healthcare.
Ireland is represented in the official selection by Lenny Abrahamson's rural drama, Garage,featuring comedian Pat Shortt in an essentially serious role as a simple man who unwittingly triggers a crisis in his life. It will have its world premiere at Cannes on Saturday night and will be followed at midnight by the concert film, U2 3D, with the band of the title in attendance.
Among the new films showing in the festival market is Kings, Tom Collins's Irish-language production dealing with Irish emigrants in London and featuring Colm Meaney, Donal O'Kelly and Brendan Conroy.
The market also has on offer dozens of films that have yet to be made, including Hunger,which is described as "an impressionistic interpretation of the last weeks in the life of Bobby Sands". German-born and Killarney-raised actor Michael Fassbender, who was in the recent release 300, will play Sands, who died on hunger strike in the Maze Prison in 1981.
Hungerwill be directed by Steve McQueen, a Turner Prize-winning British artist, from a screenplay by Irish playwright Enda Walsh. It is financed by Channel 4, the Northern Ireland Film and Television Commission and the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland.