The French producer and distributor Dino Dinev said that Nikita Mikhalkov's Burnt by the Sun 2 (Utomlennye solntzem 2) would open the Cannes Film Festival next year.

To explain his certainty about the choice of the Festival's film selectors, he said that, firstly, the original Burnt by the Sun was the Festival's prizewinner, that fact being a good recommendation, and secondly, next year is the anniversary of the end of WWII, so the film is a natural choice to open the Festival.

Dino Dinev has been working in France for many years, distributing first Soviet and then Russian films there.