Cannes, Festival de Film

   After the Academy Awards, the Cannes film festival is the biggest annual event in world cinema. It is held each year in May, in the Mediterranean coastal resort of Cannes, near Nice, and attracts the glitterati of the world's film industry. A number of different awards are distributed at the Cannes festival, the most important being Cannes' equivalent of the Oscar for the best film, the Palme d'Or (golden palm); this is one of the most coveted prizes in world cinema. Less "commercial" than the Academy awards, the Cannes festival shows a broader range of films from a much wider range of countries, and is in particular the best showcase for the European cinema industry, and for "art" cinema.