9/11 flicks set to dominate Cannes Film Festival

Politics looks set to dominate this year’s Cannes Film Festival with a slew of films about the war in Iraq and the events of September 11.

Jury president Quentin Tarantino insisted today that the art of movie-making is all that matters at the festival.

“All it comes down to is whether or not we like the movies,” he said when asked about the line-up of films competing for the Palme d’Or. “Politics be damned.”

The festival begins tomorrow and the film already making the most headlines is Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 911.

Moore, scourge of US President George Bush and no stranger to controversy, casts a critical eye over US foreign policy before and after September 11 and investigates links between the Bush and bin Laden clans.

The director, who used his Oscar speech last year to attack Bush for leading the world into war with Iraq, has denounced film giant Disney for its refusal to distribute the documentary.

A film set in contemporary Iraq and featuring actual footage of Iraqi prisoners being tortured under Saddam Hussein’s regime is also showing in Cannes.

The Hunt Feast is a British-Syrian co-production featuring a cast largely made up of British actors under Syrian director Nabil Maleh.

It follows a fictional high-ranking army officer who oversees the torture of fellow Iraqis – a sensitive subject given the current prisoner abuse scandal.

The film is not yet finished but some of the footage will be screened at the festival.

Another film which threatens to stir up controversy is The Assassination of Richard Nixon, which is showing outside the main competition.

Based on a true story, it stars Sean Penn as a struggling American furniture salesman in the 1970s who becomes embittered at his inability to realise the American dream.

Blaming the then US President Nixon for his woes, he hatches a plan to hijack a plane and crash it into the White House.

The film has uncomfortable associations with the September 11 attack on the Twin Towers.

Salam Pax, the “Baghdad Blogger” whose internet diary from inside Iraq was read around the world, has struck a film deal to put his story on the big screen.

Pax, a 29-year-old Iraqi architect, chronicled the life of an ordinary Baghdad citizen against the backdrop of the US invasion.

Film company Intermedia announced today it had secured the rights to his book, Baghdad Blog, and described Pax as “like Nick Hornby in the middle of a war“.

Pax is not the only Iraqi planning to turn his experiences into a film.

A man who was employed as a body double for Saddam Hussein’s son Uday is coming to Cannes to promote a movie version of his life.

Latif Yuhia, who fled Iraq and is now a British-based businessman, plans to arrive in Cannes in a bullet-proof Mercedes he claims to have bought from the Queen of England.