LONG BEFORE Michael Moore held aloft the top prize of the Cannes Film Festival - the Palme d'Or - at the weekend, it was clear that politics would dominate this year's event.
During the first few days of the festival, the streets were crowded with striking French arts workers and, although festival organisers finally reached an agreement with trade unions, peace wasn't restored before a few scuffles had broken out.
Catching the mood of dissent, the staff of the Carlton Hotel - the festival's top schmoozing locale - staged a walk-out on the second day in protest at working conditions, leaving guests to press their own tuxedos and - quelle horreur - make their own beds.
And then there was Moore. His provocative documentary about the failings of the Bush administration, Fahrenheit 911, made headlines before it reached Cannes, when Disney - owner of the film's producer Miramax Films - barred the mini-studio from distributing the film in the US. During the festival it emerged that Moore and Miramax bosses Harvey and Bob Weinstein were in talks to buy the film back from Disney, and hope to sell it to a third-party distributor in time for a July 4 release.
'We have a distributor in Albania now, so every country in the world can see this film except one,' said Moore when he picked up the Palme d'Or. 'I have a sneaking suspicion that what you have done here will ensure that the American people will get to see this film.'
Although a US movie took the top award, Asian cinema dominated, taking four of the eight jury prizes.
Screening at the beginning of the festival, Nobody Knows, directed by Japan's Kore-Eda Hirokazu, impressed critics with its melancholic, but not overly sentimental portrait of four children abandoned by their mother. The film's 14-year-old lead, Yuya Yagira, was awarded the best actor prize. Old Boy, directed by South Korea's Park Chan-wook, which took the Grand Prix, was tipped early on as a favourite of jury president Quentin Tarantino, and the brutal revenge tale certainly had all the right elements to appeal to the director of Kill Bill. The first Thai film in competition, Tropical Malady, directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, was deemed the artiest film in the competition. It divided critics, but shared the Jury Prize with Irma P. Hall, an actress in the Coen Brothers' The Ladykillers.