Cannes turns political as Sean Penn presides over La Croisette

Barack Obama may be good enough for his former presidential rival John Edwards - who endorsed him at a rally in Michigan on Wednesday - but if he hopes to secure the vote of the unrelentingly humourless Sean Penn, he will have his work cut out. Penn has been made chairman of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival this year, an appointment that appears to have gone to his head.

Defiantly ignoring the country's smoking ban, fag in mouth, Penn said: "I don't have a candidate I'm supporting and I'm certainly interested and excited by the hope that Barack Obama is inspiring." But he proceeded to accuse Obama of a "phenomenally inhuman and unconstitutional" voting record as a senator. "I hope that he will understand, if he is the nominee," Penn went on, "the degree of disillusionment that will happen if he doesn't become a greater man than he will ever be. This is the most important election, certainly in my lifetime, and maybe ever."

Yes, yes, Sean, muttered some of the assembled reporters, but what about the movies? The thrust of his reply will disappoint any film-maker who has come to the festival with a picture that doesn't accord with Penn's edgy, political tastes. "One way or another, when we select the Palme d'Or winner, I think we are going to feel very confident that the film-maker who made the film is very aware of the times in which he or she lives."

After his tirade, Penn joined fellow judge Natalie Portman on the red carpet for the premiere of the festival's opening film, Blindness, a South American thriller directed by Fernando Meirelles, starring Julianne Moore (pictured) and Mark Ruffalo. It is about a town struck down by a mysterious epidemic, leaving Moore the only character with the ability to see. Based on the novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Jose Saramago, its story of a community hit by disaster and receiving no government help draws obvious parallels with Hurricane Katrina. Penn should be happy about that.