Legendary Lars Van Trier (BREAKING THE WAVES) walked away from this year's Cannes Film Festival with top honours, including his second Palme d'Or, for DANCER IN THE DARK.

Inspired by the traditional Hollywood musical, the story follows a resourceful Czech immigrant Selma (in an award-winning performance by Icelandic pop star Bjork) who works in a small pressing plant in Washington State. She and her son Gene are befriended by their landlords, cop Bill (David Morse, THE GREEN MILE) and his wife Jean (Cara Seymour, AMERICAN PSYCHO), and her factory co-worker Kathy (Catherine Deneuve, EAST-WEST).

One day, a distraught Bill confesses that his wife's overspending has him on the verge of bankruptcy and, in return, Selma shares a secret of her own. She reveals that she is going blind and her son is in danger of the same fate - unless she can save enough money for him to have eye surgery before he is thirteen.

Meanwhile, Selma, in love with American musicals, has won the role of Maria in an amateur production of "The Sound of Music" and is trying to disguise her eyesight problems from her harried director. As she deals with her darkening world, Selma escapes into musical fantasies set in the cacophony of the factory, the bustle of a city bridge and the solitude of her room.

EVITA choreographer Vincent Paterson provides show-stopping dance numbers and Bjork's music was award-winning at this year's Cannes festival. DANCER IN THE DARK combines the contrasting talents of Van Trier, the bad boy of Dogme filmmaking and the glitz of the American musical which, with Bjork's Euro-pop flair, has created one of the year's most arresting and talked-about films.