Almodóvar's latest to launch this year's Cannes Film Festival

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's La Mala Educacion (Bad Education) will kick off the prestigious Cannes film festival in May, the first time a Spanish movie has opened the event, organizers said on Friday. The story of the friendship between two boys and a priest, which starts in the 1960s and runs over three decades, stars Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal, who will also appear this year as a young Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries. A delighted Almodovar said in a statement he had always regarded the festival, due to run May 12-23, as "the greatest film fest imaginable." The director was a member of the Cannes jury in 1992 and won the festival's award for best director in 1999 for All About My Mother. This year's jury will be headed by Quentin Tarantino.