Our festival success rests with Sam

The Cannes Film Festival begins on May 14th and the UK’s hopes for worldwide acclaim rest entirely on the shoulders of Sam Taylor-Wood for her short film Love You More - the only Brit flic to have made it into the competition.

Inspired by the hit song from 70s punk band Buzzcocks, the film stars Andrea Riseborough and Harry Treadway as young punks who meet in a record shop after school, fall in love and lose their virginity together.

The script was written Patrick Marber, who also wrote Closer, the play-turned-Hollywood-blockbuster starring Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen and Julia Roberts. Sam also teamed up with the late Anthony Minghella, who produced the film, and Seamus McGarvey who shot Atonement.

With Sam’s eye for the strange and beautiful, Love You More has a pedigree that makes it worth a look, even if it doesn’t manage to fight off opposition from the other contenders.

So who is Sam Taylor-Wood?

You might have seen that video of David Beckham sleeping. It was shot by Sam. She was also the artist behind the Crying Men series, photographs showing 28 Hollywood stars in tears. Her subjects included Jude Law, Daniel Craig, Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Downey Jr, Woody Harrelson,  Steve Buscemi and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

In 2002, Sam became the youngest artist to be given a retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in London, but her celebrity friendships have also lead to a certain amount of diversification. She photographed the stills for Daniel Craig’s recent movie Flashbacks of a Fool and was also the music video producer for Elton John’s I Want Love.

Love You More signals Sam's new focus on moving pictures and she's contemplating extending it into a feature film. If she scoops the prize at Cannes, who knows where it will take her...