The 33rd Deauville Festival of American Cinema, running in the French town Aug 31-Sept 9, will open with King of California, which stars Michael Douglas stars a newly-released mental patient juggling his obsession for hidden gold with his relationship with his teenage daughter (Evan Rachel Wood). The film is directed by first-timer Mike Cahill and produced by Sideways and About Schmidt director Alexander Payne.

Douglas will also be one of four subjects of Deauville Tributes, with a series of his films screened to celebrate his career. Fellow Tribute recipients are Sigourney Weaver, Sidney Lumet and Ida Lupino, the pioneering female film-maker and actress who died in 1995.

Lumet's new production, Before The Devil Knows You're Dead, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke, is one of two world premieres at the Festival, the other being actor Ben Affleck's debut feature Gone, Baby, Gone, a thriller starring Morgan Freeman and Affleck's brother Casey.

Among a total of 64 films selected for the festival, Affleck's film is one of 12 feature debuts, five of which are in competition. These include Broken English from Zoe Cassavetes; and James C Strouse's Sundance hit Grace Is Gone, starring John Cusack as a husband whose wife has been killed in Iraq.

A total of 11 films are in competition, also including George Hickenlooper's Factory Girl with Sienna Miller, Adrienne Shelly's Waitress starring Keri Russell, and The Dead Girl, directed by Karen Moncrieff.

The Feature Jury will be chaired by French director and critic Andre Techine, while Gael Morel, the star of Techine's best-known film, Les Roseaux Sauvages (1994), will chair the jury for the Cartier Most Promising Newcomer Award. This award goes to a film in the official competition demonstrating innovative qualities, and went last year to Ryan Fleck's Half Nelson.

The festival's Uncle Sam's Docs strand sees nine documentaries compete for the award CanalPlus Favourite Doc, to be presented during the closing ceremony. Documentaries in contention include Spike Lee's When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts, Michael Moore's Sicko, Barbara Leibovitz's document of her photographer sister, Annie Leibovitz: Life Through A Lens, and Brando, Leslie Grief's portrait of the movie legend.

Other scheduled events will include the awarding of The Michel D'Ornano Award for a debut French film to Marc Fitoussi's La Vie D'Artiste, while a series of screenings under the heading 'American Nights' will see 60 classic genre films shown non-stop in sections including Westerns, Gangster Movies and Noir, Erotic Films and Comedies.

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