A poster of My Blueberry Nights

The 60th Cannes Film Festival will open May 16 with Wong Kar-Wai's first English-language project, My Blueberry Nights, also an entrant for competition, festival organizers have announced.

This is the first Hong Kong-produced film to be invited to open Cannes.

My Blueberry Nights tells the story of a blueberry-pie-eating girl traveling across the vast expanses of the United States of America, searching, like all of Wong's protagonists, for the meaning of "love."

The film features big names from Britain and America, such as superstar chanteuse Nora Jones, Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman, and David Strathairn.

Its production team is also a mix of Eastern and Western talents, with American crime writer Lawrence Block as the screenplay writer, French Darius Khondji as the cinematographer, William Chang from Hong Kong as the production designer and editor, as well as an American camera crew.

After the news reached him, Wong Kar-Wai said, "It is a great honor for the film to be invited. I'm looking forward to coming back to Cannes, to lift the curtain with my production, on the celebration of its 60th birthday."

My Blueberry Nights is an international film nonetheless embracing the spirit of Hong Kong film, Wong added.

Wong has been a frequent visitor to Cannes since the 1990s. He won the Best Director prize in 1997 for the film Happy Together. His protagonist Tony Leung was the judged Best Actor in 2000 for In the Mood for Love. In 2006, Wong headed the jury for the 59th Cannes festival, becoming the first Chinese jury president in its history.

(CRI.cn April 24, 2007)