The 61st Cannes film festival opened last night with Fernando Meirelles’ “Blindness” starring Julianne Moore. It will close with Barry Levinson’s “What Just Happened” starring Robert Deniro. However, the big buzz is around “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” which will be having its world premiere there this Sunday.

So you might be fooled into thinking that Cannes has just become another venue for American movie stars to strut their stuff and show-off their product. Well it is all that…but there are many other great filmmakers who are showing their films this year.

The Belgian Dardenne brothers who did “Rosetta” and “The Child” have a new film in the competition “The Silence of Lorna.” A past winner from Turkey, Nuri Bilge Ceylan competes with “Three Monkeys”…and Atom Egoyan with “Adoration.” Wim Wenders has “Palermo Shooting.” Norwegian director Bent Hamer (“Kitchen Stories”) is in the “Un Certain Regard” category. It will be interesting to see which films get U.S. distribution. Certainly, winning the big prize, the Palme D’or has usually entailed a release stateside. But how many people saw last year’s “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days?” Or Ken Loach’s “The Wind That Shakes The Barley?” You have to go back to 2004 and “Fahrenheit 9/11” to see a winner with that popular appeal.