'Tetro' to open Cannes Directors' Fortnight

US film giant Francis Ford Coppola is to premiere his new indie movie "Tetro," a tale of sibling rivalry set in Buenos Aires, at Cannes' prestigious Directors' Fortnight, organisers said Friday.

The 70-year-old director, a two-time Palme d'Or-winner at Cannes, will open the Fortnight on May 14, the first of two dozen films in the out-of-competition show, which runs as a sidebar to the official May 13-24 festival.

Starring US actor Vincent Gallo in the title role, "Tetro" tells the story of a 17-year-old Italian-American who returns from New York to the Buenos Aires of his youth to search for his writer brother, missing for a decade.

The Oscar-winning director, who also wrote the film, says he drew on his childhood memories to create a "personal" work about family relationships, although he denies it is autobiographical.

Shot last year on a 15-million-dollar budget, mostly in the Italian quarter of Buenos Aires, La Boca, the black-and-white film has more in common with European 1960s cinema than Hollywood mega-productions, according to Coppola.

The Italian-American director of "Apocalypse Now" and "The Godfather" returned to the silver screen in 2007 after a 10-year absence, with the philosophical movie "Youth Without Youth."

Launched in 1968 by avant-garde directors including Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, the Directors' Fortnight puts its focus on discovering new and groundbreaking talent.

It can boast having helped launch the careers of high-flyers such as Stephen Frears, Nagisa Oshima, Martin Scorsese and Wim Wenders.

While this year's official Cannes lineup is light on US fare, with Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" (sic) the only stateside movie competing for the Palme d'Or, the Fortnight is showing five US works including Coppola's.

"Amreeka" by Cherien Dabis, shows a Palestinian mother and teenage son learning to adapt to life in the US. The film screened at Sundance as did Lynn Shelton's comedy "Humpday" and Glenn Ficarra and John Requa's "I Love You Phillip Morris."

US film grad brothers Benny and Josh Safdie were also invited to premiere their new film "Go Get Some Rosemary," about an Interpol agent probing the murky dealings of an international banking conglomerate.

Olivier Pere, who runs the Fortnight, said this year's crop of films stood out for its lightness of tone.

"It's a good year -- full of surprises. We were struck by the number of comedies, or films with a humorous streak," he said.

"We rarely have the pleasure of inviting so many powerful and original comedies to the Fortnight."

Black humour oozes from Luc Moullet's documentary about a string of murders, "Land of Madness," one of a crop of French films in the lineup along with works by Alain Guiraudie and first-time filmmakers Riaf Sattouf and Axelle Ropert.

Canada also boasts three French-language titles in the lineup: Denis Villeneuve's "Polytechnique," about the December 1989 massacre of 14 female students at a Montreal university; Denis Cote's "Carcasses," about a solitary man who collects old cars; and 19-year-old Xavier Dolan's "I Killed My Mother."

Asia gets a look in with "Like You Know it All" by South Korea's Hong Sang-Soo, while Singapore's Ho Tzu-Nyen showcases "Here," about a middle-aged man struggling to cope with his wife's sudden death.

Japan's Nobuhiro Suwa joined forces with French actor Hippolyte Girardot to co-direct the bi-lingual "Yuki et Nina", a movie about two little girls, one French one Japanese, torn apart by a divorce.

And in "Ne Chamge Rien" (Don't Change a Thing), Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa follows French actress-turned-chanteuse Jeanne Balibar on tour in Japan.