Yama Rahimi

This year Korean writer and director Bong Joon-Ho will preside over the jury that hands out the Camera d'Or (Golden Camera) award - the only cross-section award on the Croisette that is given to the best first feature. This year's winner will join the ranks of Michael Rowe (Leap Year, 2010), Warwick Thornton (Samson & Delilah, 2009), Steve McQueen (Hunger, 2008), Etgar Keret & Shira Geffen (Jellyfish, 2007), Corneliu Porumboiu (12:08 East of Bucharest, 2006) who all won the prestigious prize in the last five years.

Annually loyal to its stars and auteurs with an extended red carpet rolled out for them to make an appearance either with a film or to serve in an honorary position, it is names, names and more names that Cannes stands for and since Van Sant arrived in Cannes for the first time with "To Die For," he has since won the Palme d'Or and best director for "Elephant" and was last seen in Cannes with "Paranoid Park" (prior to that he was among those who contributed to Chacun son Cinema).

Before the official competition for the 64th edition of the Festival de Cannes is announced this week, the organizers announced a "new" change embracing the "old". In what will become an annual tradition, the inaugural of the Honorary Palme d'Or will begin with legendary Italian writer and director Bernardo Bertolucci.

"people think it was a rather unlikely success story but I found it a perfect storm of ingredients when I read the story. A man with a stammer forced to become a king right at a time when the radio was taking over as a mass medium, right before second world war who's saved by a failed Australian Shakespeare actor who has become a speech therapist. You can't make this stuff up."

Porterfield's camera corners these people and ask them questions about the dead man which could be interpreted in a multitude of ways. These characters seem to be more approachable to the camera than the norm, hinting that the camera can read into their thoughts.