Woody Allen's 'Cafe Society' to open Cannes film festival

Woody Allen's Hollywood love story "Cafe Society" will open the Cannes film festival in May, its organisers said Tuesday.

The movie starring Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg tells the story of a young man who goes to Los Angeles in the 1930s in the hope of working in the film industry.

The 80-year-old New Yorker has already opened Cannes -- the world's leading film festival -- twice with "Hollywood Ending" (2002) and "Midnight in Paris" (2011), his love letter to the French capital.

The film will not be in competition for the festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or, which Allen has never won.

However, he will become the first director to have ever opened the festival three times.

Allen has had a dozen of his films shown at the festival on the French Riviera since "Manhattan" in 1979, appearing in two of them as an actor.

"Cafe Society", which also stars Parker Posey and Steve Carell, is being released by the Internet giant Amazon.

According to the organisers, Eisenberg's character "falls in love and finds himself swept up in the vibrant (Hollywood) cafe society that defined the spirt of the age."

Meanwhile, the cult Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki will be honoured with the Golden Carriage award at Cannes, the French Society of Film Directors said Tuesday.

The famously lugubrious maker of "The Man Without a Past" and "I Hired a Contract Killer" twice boycotted the Oscars because of US foreign policy under former president George W Bush.

The festival runs between May 11 and 22.