Antonio Banderas guest of honour at Acapulco film festival

Mexico City: Spanish actor Antonio Banderas will have the honour of inaugurating Nov 24 the 8th Acapulco International Film Festival, where he will travel with his wife, actress Melanie Griffith, officials said.

"Banderas has been involved in films and dubbings that have been very successful in Mexico," the awards festival director Victor Sotomayor told EFE, adding that last year they wanted to invite him for the computer-animation film "Puss in Boots", for which the actor dubbed the voice of the leading character, but he was too busy at the time to attend. Though nothing is certain as yet, Sotomayor said they are "very near confirmation" that the Mexican Salma Hayek, who coincidentally worked in the same animated movie with Banderas, will ring down the festival curtain Nov 30. During the week of the event, more than 70 domestic and international movies, from documentaries to short and feature-length films, will be shown at different venues around the southern state of Guerrero - Ixtapa, Taxco, Chilpancingo and Acapulco. Sotomayor said that one purpose of the festival is to help Acapulco "recover its dignity and the glorious fame" it once had as Mexico`s leading tourist resort, a reference to the wave of drug-related violence the city is going through that has considerably diminished the number of visitors. "It`s an international festival inspired by the way Acapulco was seen and internationally admired back in the 1970s," the director said. IANS