Woody Allen has completed post-production on his 34th film Hollywood Endings -- co-financed by DreamWorks SKG and Germany's VCL -- and told international press this weekend that he thinks it is his funniest film in years. He added that he is hoping that it will be presented at the Cannes Film Festival next year.

Allen, conducting interviews for his 33rd film The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion which opens domestically through DreamWorks on Aug 10, said that he finished editing Hollywood Endings two weeks ago and, apart from revealing that it was his first film about the process of making movies, would reveal little else about the plot which is, as usual, shrouded in secrecy.

He added, however, that while he is notoriously critical of his own films, once they are finished, that he was delighted with Hollywood Endings and thought it was very funny. The film stars Allen alongside Tea Leoni, Treat Williams, Mark Rydell, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and Scott Wolf.

The film-maker has frequently attended the Berlin and Venice film festivals but a film of his hasn't been at Cannes since 1989 when New York Stories - a tryptych one segment of which Allen directed - played out of competition.

Hollywood Endings will be the third Allen-directed picture to be distributed by DreamWorks SKG after Small Time Crooks, which grossed a healthy $17.3m last summer, and Jade Scorpion which kicks off his new three-film deal with the studio. German public company VCL is co-financing this new trio.

The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion, starring Allen and Helen Hunt, was warmly received by journalists. It is a comedy crime caper set in an insurance investigators office in 1940. Allen plays a veteran investigator and Hunt the new office manager to whom he takes an instant dislike. But when the two of them are hypnotised on stage at a nightclub, they become unwitting participants in a series of burglaries. Dan Aykroyd, Elizabeth Berkley, David Ogden Stiers and Wallace Shawn co-star.