Cannes Film Festival launches

The Cannes Film Festival was beginning today with a trio of British movies vying to take home the top prize.

Directors Mike Leigh, Ken Loach and Michael Winterbottom are in the running for the prestigious Palme d'Or, which was without a single British entry last year.

Winterbottom's offering is the recently released 24 Hour Party People, which stars Steve Coogan and charts the rise of the Manchester music scene.

Loach is hoping for success with Sweet Sixteen, in which a hard-up teenager whose mother is in prison tries to scrape together the money to buy a caravan so his family can move away and start a better life.

The third film in contention, Leigh's All Or Nothing, tells the story of the residents of a London housing estate over one weekend through the eyes of a taxi driver played by Timothy Spall.

Leigh was the last British winner of the Palme d'Or when Secrets and Lies came away with the prize in 1996.

Another film in the competition, Spider, is directed by American David Cronenberg but has a largely British cast including Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne and Lynn Redgrave.

Fiennes plays a man released from a mental institution who tries to piece together the events surrounding his mother's death.

The festival is the 55th to be held in Cannes and is one of the glitziest dates in the showbiz calendar, with a host of Hollywood stars descending on the Cote d'Azur town.

Catherine Zeta Jones, Jack Nicholson, Christina Ricci and Helena Bonham Carter are among the big names expected to put in an appearance on the Croisette.

The festival opens tonight with Woody Allen's Hollywood Ending, which sees him play a neurotic director forced to make a movie with his ex-wife and the man who stole her away from him.

One of the most controversial films to be screened will be Bowling For Columbine, a US documentary which focuses on the 1999 Columbine school massacre and takes an uncompromising look at gun crime in the US.

And critics will get their first taste of Martin Scorsese's long-awaited epic, Gangs of New York, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz, in a special 20-minute screening.

The winner of the Palme d'Or will be announced on the last day of the 12-day festival.

There are 22 films in contention and the winning entry will be decided by a judging panel which includes its president, US director David Lynch, Hollywood actress Sharon Stone and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon star Michelle Yeoh.


/Dailymail.Co.Uk/