Cannes, France  - The Cannes Film Festival ends Sunday with no clear favourite having emerged in the race for top honours in what has been vintage year for the world's leading movie showcase.

Indeed, as the countdown to the jury's announcement at a lavish award ceremony gets underway, a slew of movies have emerged as leading contenders for the festival's coveted Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) for 2009 with few willing to lay beats on the victor.

Cannes - Taiwan-based arthouse director Tsai Ming-Liang ended the 62nd Cannes Film Festival's main competition Saturday with a display of stunning visuals in his latest movie Visage (Face).

It was a fitting end to the Cannes festival's race for the coveted Palme d'Or, which has included some remarkable visual moments from human longing through to futurism as well as sweeping vistas displaying the force of nature.

Cannes - Taiwan-based arthouse director Tsai Ming-Liang ended the 62nd Cannes Film Festival's main competition Saturday with a display of stunning visuals in his latest movie Visage (Face).

It was a fitting end to the Cannes festival's race for the coveted Palme d'Or, which has included some remarkable visual moments from human longing through to futurism as well as sweeping vistas displaying the force of nature.

Cannes  - If there are a few folorn-looking souls strolling along the Croisette, Cannes' beach-front boulevard, this weekend, it will be because a vintage year for the city's film festival has come to an end.

Indeed, the 62nd festival wraps on Sunday with the awarding of Cannes' iconic Palme d'Or after 12 days and a host of strong works by some of the world's best film artists, making it very difficult to call which film might emerge as the victor.

Cannes, France - As any good entrepreneur will tell you, there is always an opportunity in any business downturn.

This is how the Asian motion picture business appears to be sizing up its prospects, a result of the economic storm that has swept through the world film industry over the last 18 months, hitting Hollywood particularly hard.

With signs of a strong domestic movie market driven by a home-grown product, the Asian movie business continues to grow in international stature spurred on by the digital revolution and Hollywood remakes of Asian film hits.

Cannes - The French city of Cannes was hit by a power failure Tuesday as it was staging what is the world's leading film festival.

While festival officials said an emergency generator meant that screenings and events on Cannes' famed red carpet would continue, many shops throughout the Cote d'Azur town shut their doors as a result of the power failure.

French energy officials warned that it could take some time to return power to the city, which each year hosts the festival attracting the top figures in the global motion picture business and the world's leading stars.

Cannes  - Filipino director Brillante Mendoza said Sunday he made his film Kinatay about a young man's plunge into violent crime as a reminder to the Philippines of how brutal gangs have become part of the country's everyday life.

"We have seen this story a lot in the Philippines - (media) stories about people being butchered and massacred," Mendoza told a press conference in Cannes marking his movie's premiere at the world's leading film festival.

Cannes  - Oscar-winning director Ang Lee admits he also was swept along with the spirit of Woodstock when making his tribute to the legendary 1969 Woodstock festival.

"I was in peace and happiness making the film," said Taiwanese- born Lee Saturday at a press conference marking the screening of his Taking Woodstock at the Cannes Film Festival.

"I am not particularly a rock fan or person," US-based Lee said, who added that it wanted to explore the cultural phenomena surrounding the three-day music extravaganza.

According to reports, Hrithik Roshan starrer ‘Kites’, which is one of the much-awaited films of this year (2009), will be marketed during the 62nd International Cannes Film Festival, starting May 13, by Reliance BIG Pictures.

Reliance ADAG will market 18 movies in all including various films in world cinema and popular cinema sections.

Cannes - Chinese director Lou Ye appears unperturbed about the reaction from Beijing to his latest movie, which delves into subjects the nation's heavy-handed censors prefer to keep out of the country's cinema.

He shot the film despite an official ban on him making films.

Clandestinely filmed in the provincial Chinese metropolis of Nanjing, Lou's Spring Fever, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, is a movie about desire that revolves around a passionate affair between a married man and his more openly gay lover.

Cannes  - A 3-D comedy about a cranky old man who ties helium balloons to his house in the hope of fulfilling a boyhood dream of flying to South America makes Cannes Film Festival history Wednesday when it becomes first animated movie to open the world's greatest movie fest.

Madrid - In Pedro Almodovar's new film Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces), movie director Mateo falls in love with his leading actress Lena, who lives unhappily together with their film's rich elderly producer.

The couple's forbidden passion vibrates with all the emotion of a great love story, yet it also has a strangely celluloid quality to it, as if art were truer to life than life itself.

Los Angeles - Spotting the world's greatest movie stars at the Cannes film festival might be a little more difficult than usual this year.

The number of Hollywood films at the competition is at a record low and US movie studios are cutting back spending on trips to the glamorous French Riviera.

Like every other sector of the US economy, they are feeling the sharp effects of the global economic downturn industry officials say.

Cannes, France - The World Trade Organization does not work properly and Russia will not join it if the conditions for accession are "humiliating," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday ahead of a summit with European Union leaders.

Cannes, France- Europe should take complete control of migration into and out of the continent, working with the rest of the world to end illegal migration and manage legal flows, EU justice ministers said Monday at the opening of an informal meeting.
"We are not turning Europe into a bunker, but we are steering migrant flows in the world," German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said ahead of talks with EU counterparts in the southern French beach resort of Cannes.
"We cannot leave all these questions of migrant flows in disorder, we have to organize (them)," EU Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot said.

Cannes, France - French director Laurent Cantet on Sunday won the Palme d'Or for best film of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival for his movie The Class (Entre Les Murs) about teacher-pupil relationships in a multicultural school in France.

A total of 22 films were vying for the Palme d'Or, which is one of the most prestigious awards in cinema with the win ending France's long-running losing streak at the world's leading film festival.

Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan awarded best director in Cannes

Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan won Sunday Cannes Film Festival's best director award for his brooding family drama Three Monkeys (Uc Maymum).

Cannes, France - Italian directors scored top awards at the Cannes Film Festival with the nation's two films selected in the main competition winning key prizes.

While Paolo Sorrentino was awarded the jury prize for his political satire about Italy's seven-time prime minister Giulio Andreotti, Matteo Garrone's powerful expose of the Mafia, Gomorrah, emerged from the festival with the Grand Prix, which is the third prize after Palme d'Or.

A total of 22 films were part of the 12-day festival's main competition. (dpa)

Cannes, France - After a hectic 12-day round of glitz, glamour and gritty movie themes, the Cannes Film Festival reaches its climax Sunday with the world's leading movie fest unveiling its top honours for 2008.

But while the countdown to the jury's announcement at a lavish award ceremony gets underway, the festival appeared to have failed to produce a knockout candidate for its major award, the coveted Palme d'Or (Golden Palm).

As a result, a tight race has emerged among the films vying for some of the movie industry's most prestigious prizes, with the main competition for the 61st Cannes festival dominated by films exploring the darker side of life.

Cannes - The recent series of global natural disasters that have left thousands dead have been playing both onscreen and off-screen roles at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

Apart from the festival's opening film about a town ravaged by an outbreak of blindness, leading Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie, in town for the screening of two films, has been fielding questions about her response to the devastating typhoon that hit Myanmar and that massive earthquake that engulfed parts of China.

Cannes - Cannes' glamour Richter scale edged up a notch Wednesday with Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie and partner Brad Pitt launching a round of public engagements at the festival.

The star voltage in Cannes might be a little lower this year than in recent years (partly a result of the smaller number of Hollywood films in the running for the festival's top prizes).

But the presence of Brangelina it seems can always set the pulse racing among the paparazzi and the long lines of loyal movie fans who spend days camping outside the fest's main for a glimpse of their favourite stars.