Though small in number, female directors the toast of Cannes

CANNES, France (AP) — Flanked by her colorful cast, the British director Andrea Arnold danced down the Cannes Film Festival red carpet to the thump of the hip-hop that adorns her electric road movie, "American Honey."

The pulse of Cannes, which already beats at a frenetic pace, was quickened by Arnold's throbbing and sensory American odyssey into a poor Midwestern underbelly seen through a traveling van of wayward teens trying to scam suburbanites.

The exuberance of the film and Arnold's merry band of youngsters — including breakout star Sasha Lane, Shia LaBeouf and a number of nonprofessional actors picked up along the way — spilled across the festival's red carpet Sunday.

[...] back in the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced last Wednesday that a year after urging the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate discrimination against female film and TV directors, it was "encouraged by the scope of the government's process."

Asked at a "Women in Motion" talk in Cannes whether 50/50 quotas should be considered in Hollywood, Jodie Foster (whose fourth film as a director, the hostage thriller "Money Monster," premiered out of competition) was hesitant to go that far.

While gender equality in moviemaking has been a running conversation at the festival, it's been overshadowed by the quality of the films.