In a departure from its usual cluster of major US studio films, a record half of the titles in Deauville's prestigious 'Avant-Premieres' selection are handled by French independent distributors, giving the American film festival a more auteurish twist.

Along with Steven Spielberg's AI and another Warner Bros movie, Swordfish, the titles announced so far in the main non-competitive section include Rob Cohen's summer hit The Fast And The Furious, Joe Roth's America's Sweethearts and Brian Helgeland's A Knight's Tale.

The other half of the Premiere titles are all going the independent way, including Ted Demme's Blow (Metropolitan Fimexport), Ethan Hawke's Chelsea Walls (ARP Selection), Michel Gondry's Human Nature (Bac Distribution), Harald Zwart's One Night At McCool's (Europa), Amos Kollek's Queenie In Love and Dewey Nicks'Slackers (both distributed by Pyramide).

To date, the titles in the competitive Panorama section, which offers an eclectic selection of US auteur titles, include Todd Solondz's Storytelling, featuring John Goodman and Selma Blair, Tom DiCillo's Double Whammy starring Elizabeth Hurley and Steve Buscemi, Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World, which also features Buscemi, Henry Bean's The Believer, with Summer Phoenix and Ryan Gosling, Abel Ferrara's Drea De Matteo-starrer R-Xmas as well as Bill Plympton's adult animated tale Mutant Aliens.

America's Sweethearts' Catherine Zeta-Jones, Blow's Johnny Depp and Chelsea Walls' Uma Thurman will be among the Hollywood luminaries who will join Spielberg in Deauville (which will also feature a Stanley Kubrick retrospective).