Because the Festival's Anniversary is a homage to artists, it will be celebrated by a film, To Each His Own Cinema, both a personal and collective work. 35 renowned directors including Ken Loach, Atom Egoyan, Walter Salles, Lars Von Trier, Wim Wenders had carte blanche to come up with a three minute film focused on that institution known as the "movie theatre".

Canadian artist Robert Carsen, who recently directed Leonard Bernstein's Candide at the Théâtre du Châtelet, has created an on-stage introduction to the film for the Théâtre Lumière. The world premiere of To Each His Own Cinema takes place on 20 May 2007 and will air the same evening on Canal +.

India to have a presence: The festival shall celebrate the co-anniversaries of the 60 years of Indian independence and 60 of the Cannes Film Festival by inviting India to inaugurate iys Tous les Cinémas du Monde programme. Indian film will be shoacsed on 19 and 20 May. The organisers though note that two days of screening will barely suffice to celebrate that vast continent of cinema, that profusion of styles, languages and religions.

Cinema from Lebanon, Poland, Africa, Colombia and Slovenia will be celebrated on the following days.

A highlight of the festival will be The Cinema Masterclass which will be conducted by Oscar winning director Martin Scorsese The Departed. The Actor's Masterclass will be conducted by by Sergio Castellito. The Music Masterclass will be conducted by Oscar winning composer Howard Shore The Lord Of The Rings in the presence of director David Cronenberg A History Of Violence. There will also be a tribute to the late actor Henry Fonda On Golden Pond in the presence of his daughter Jane Fonda.

On 20 May a public concert of film music will be held on Plage Macé, with the participation of the Traffic Quintet, DJ Wax Taylor, artist Ange Leccia and video directors from Divan du Monde who will come to revisit the images and film music of Cannes.

There will also be a seminar on Cinema, towards the audiences of tomorrow. Motion-picture and new media professionals, journalists and sociologists will debate on 16 May 2007 the ties between cinematic creation, new promotional and broadcast platforms, and the evolution of audience practices.

Europe Day: The Festival de Cannes will host the 5th Europe Day, on 26 May reuniting the European Ministers of Culture and well-known figures of cinema to further explore the reflections of the Opening Forum and seek political solutions to the mutations of the digital landscape.

A new site: Before the opening of the Festival de Cannes, the new website will be launched: with its innovative structure, modern aesthetics and ergonomic navigation.

www.festival-cannes.com will offer the lion's share to news events in photos and videos during the event itself, offers on-line services and makes available to journalists all information on the programme as well as updates

22 Films Competing For The Palm D'Or: 22 movies are competing for the Palm D'Or. They include Death Proof from Quentin Tarantino. In 1994 Tarantino stunned people when Pulp Fiction won the prize. He is joined by another American filmmaker Gus Van Sant who is present with Paranoid Park. His film Elephant had won a prize at Cannes a few years back. David Fincher's Zodiac about the hunt for a San Francisco serial killer is also competing. Asian filmmaker Wong Kar Wai's My Blueberry Nights is the opening film in the competition.

Other films in competition include James Gtay's We Own The Night, Naomi Kawase's Mogari The Mourning Forest, KIM Ki Duk's Breath Emir Kusturica's Promise Me This and Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine. The closing film at Cannes is Denys Arcand's L’Âge Des Tenebres which is not in competition.

There will be Hollywood glamour courtesy Ocean's Thirteen. The film with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Andy Garcia, Matt Damon will have its premiere and will not be in competition. Michael Moore's Sicko will also premiere out of competition which is a little surprising considering that his previous film Farenheit 9/11 won the Palm D'Or a few years back. British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart will also air out of competition.

There will also be midnight screenings of Olivier Asayas' Boarding Gate, Abel Ferrara's Go Go Tales, Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington's sU2 3D ’

Jury members: British Oscar nominated filmmaker filmmaker Stephen Frears The Queen will head the festival jury. The other members are Asian actress Maggie Cheung, Australian Oscar nominated actress Toni Collette The Sixth Sense, European actress and director Maria De Medeiros, Canadian actress Sarah Polley who recently made her directorial debut, Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio, Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, French actor and director Michel Piccoli and Mauritania filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako.

Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang ke will head the short films jury. The other members are Iranian actress Niki Karimi, American costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis, French writer J.M.G. Le Clezio, and French director Dominik Moll. The short films in competition include Mark Albiston's Run from New Zealand, Tim Thaddeus Cahill's The Oaote’s Valour from the US, and Antonio Campos' The Last 15 also from the US.

LE MARCHÉ DU FILM: This focusses on the international motion picture business. It welcomes each and every year producers, exporters, distributors and financiers, hailing from all five continents. It claims to get around 10,000 attendees.
As of 14 April 2007 more than 3,000 companies from 80 different countries have already already confirmed their participation, attesting to the global attraction of the Marché du Film as one of the cornerstones of the financial and artistic montage of films and negotiation of coproduction contracts.

With more than 1,500 screenings, the Marché du Film offers buyers a virtually infinite diversity of films. This year once again the organisers state that everything has been done to offer the best possible working conditions. A programme of renovation by third parties is in progress in the screening rooms. Two theatres have been equipped with digital projection. Moreover, the Marché du Film is inaugurating a new zone, baptised Lerins situated on the second floor of the Riviera to welcome some twenty sales firms and four motion-picture theatres.

The Marché du Film thus offers its 520 exhibitor companies a framework to perform the greatest part of their annual turnover.

Producers Network: Launched in 2004, the Producers Network is a programme whose aim is to accompany producers in the international development of their projects. This "network of networks" reunites more than 500 producers from
all five continents, notably those producers selected by the most important coproduction markets.

The producers meet every morning around 16 thematic roundtables where seasoned guests offer their expertise in production and international financing.To further increase and enhance meetings between producers, the Producers Network has added this year to its programme two "speed-dating" sessions on 17 and 18 May. The participants meet by groups of five to six producers from different countries to exchange idea and discuss their projects.

Cinado.Com: Launched in 2005, this is an international film database. A reference tool for professionals all year round and updated before each great international rendezvous (Toronto, AFM, Berlin and Cannes) cinando.com is supported by the Media Programme of the European Commission. Their website contains information on some 6,500 companies and 10,000 active titles (projects or completed works). In 2006 it registered 3,642,528 visited pages.

New filmmakers: The 2007 Atelier has selected 15 filmmaker projects from 15 different countries. A tailor-made accompaniment is offered to both the directors and their producers to help finalise the financial assembly of their projects. This selection, in the spirit of the festival privileges discovery with debut films, while supporting as well the work in progress of recognised artists.

Certain screenplays question human nature in the child, whether it is in a world without God, the State and or a father, whether in middle of the Amazonian forest (Salamandra), an Austrian catholic boarding school between worship and sacrifice (Serviam), or a small Korean town (Treeless Mountain). This research continues on the adolescent who preserves in him something pure and intact despite all the harshness being brought up in a Romanian orphanage (A Heart-Shaped Balloon).

In the adult, it is a question of coming up with just the right balance between what we feel and what we show, while at the same time respecting divine will To Die Like a Man, freeing ourselves of all principles of reality and living the dream About War lying to oneself, even thinking that everything can begin all over again (Blown by the Typhoon) or yielding to the irrational Native Dancer. In the end and from a more general point of view, it's the journey of a soul through the four forms of life the four times, or the quest of oneself in the face of the other.

Other projects offer a fresh look at social realities: an invitation to see what binds us instead of wondering what makes us different, as in the adventures in Colombia of two tramps The Wind Journey, or a glance at the changes in the way of life in a Turkish village Milk.

The theme of the war and violence is highly present in the Lebanese I Can't Go Home, Sri Lankan The Fallen and Moroccan Between Parentheses projects.