He may have been a famous Bond villain, but Mathieu Amalric was very much the hero in Cork as he opened the city’s French Film Festival.

Mathieu Amalric once spent time in Cork nursing a broken heart, but now the star is back on Leeside to present his new film writes Marjorie Brennan

'Quantum of Solace' villain Mathieu Amalric has no interest in winning movie awards as an actor - because he sees himself primarily as a director.

Amalric, soon to be seen as the latest 007 baddie, stars in this excellent French thriller with a strong battle of wits as its core, that between Amalric and Lonsdale as the former thinks he has discovered something with a nasty Nazi secret going on in the corporation he works for.