I'll tell you what I think about that question and, as a bonus, I'll be taking a look for you at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival, a great place to find future arthouse kings and queens. Let's begin!

Fatih Akin is still a virtual unknown to the common moviegoer, but the German filmmaker is quickly becoming one of the most promising names of the young European cinema. With only a handful of feature films on his resume, and before reaching the age of 35, the man already won awards from two of the most prestigious film festivals of the planet: He grabbed the Golden Bear from the Berlin Film Festival with Head-On in 2004, and the Best Screenplay Prize from the Cannes Film Festival with The Edge of Heaven, which beats Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to theaters by a single day, arriving on Wednesday, May 21.

There are films I write about over and over in along the months prior to their release, and regular readers will have noticed that The Edge of Heaven is definitely one of them. The best reason to support and believe in such a film's chances is that American cinephiles are extremely fond of well reviewed and multiply awarded European films (and filmmakers). With this film being one of the Top Five most respected films of last year in Europe, it is almost absolutely certain that its launch in what appears to be a single New York theater (the Film Forum) will generate strong numbers.

The film, which beautifully depicts the intersecting lives of half-a-dozen people, men and women, Germans and Turks, shuttling between Dresden and Istanbul, should have its release play out quite comparably to Fatih Akin's previous film, Head-On. At the time it got to theaters, Head-On, released by the exact same distributor (Strand) and also dumped into a single theater, notched a $15,000 PTA opening weekend, and delivered more than $10,000 PTA seven days later. Of course, it did not open face-to-face with the most eagerly anticipated film of the year (you know, my spiritual brother with the hat and whip ...) in the middle of May, but it did open in January when all of that year's Oscar hopefuls were clamoring for attention.

So it's safe to imagine that, given the excellent reviews that should come pouring in, and given everything on the paper that ma kes it a prestigious arthouse release, The Edge of Heaven should be very well worth its $4 price tag in Ultimate Movie Moguls leagues, with the prospect of an 8 User Rating, and a chance at grabbing 3 or 4 PTA points on opening weekend, and possibly 1 or 2 more later on. Box Office Moguls-wise, it's entirely irrelevant, but in Ultimate leagues, The Edge of Heaven is one of the most, if not the most, promising films that can be picked up for less than $5.

The word seems to have spread among the web that yours truly has a crush on Gong Li.  "They" are trying to trick me by releasing a film in which someone named  "Guang Li" has a supporting role.  "They" think I will mistake that name for the real Gong Li and praise the film in that way. In reality though, it's just me getting a little paranoid and way over my head (as if  "they" read my column ... wink), so let's do things properly when discussing the next film, The Children of Huang Shi (May 23). I already told you a few things about this one last week in my special summer column (which made mention of The Edge of Heaven, too), but let's get a bit more into it.

The film follows a young British journalist who, in Japanese-occupied 1937 China, struggles to save dozens of orphans. It seems like a strong and emotional human journey, but, as the release of Fugitive Pieces has just demonstrated, you need more than just that to bring in audiences. Fortunately though, The Children of Huang Shi has a lot more than a good story to hook moviegoers. First, an undeniably good-looking cast led by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, who's clearly a hot property since Match Point and The Tudors have given him a nice place in the biz. The talented Irishman is surrounded by Radha Mitchell and a few Chinese actors, among whom, of course, are Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh (although technically she is Malaysian), reunited on film eight years after Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Behind the camera is Roger Spottiswoode, who seemed to have disappeared into limbo since making The Sixth Day with The Governator back in 2000. (I was going to crack a joke about that one ... before realizing that I haven't even seen it!) (Joke from Indie's editor: Man, that movie sucked.) Spottiswoode, in fact, has continued working, directing two TV movies and three feature films (including a Tom Ripley movie with Barry Pepper!) in those last eight years. An editor in the '70s, who worked on Straw Dogs and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid before turning to directing in the '80s, Spottiswoode is mostly known as the director of the 1997 James Bond vintage Tomorrow Never Dies. It won't be with The Children of Huang Shi that the man will touch the heights of the box office again, but it should remind a lot of people that the Canadian filmmaker is at least still in the game.

But even though this film has a much brighter cast, a much more experienced distributor (Sony Classics), and a much clearer storyline than The Edge of Heaven, The Children of Huang Shi is certainly not worth its $7 price tag the way that Heaven is worth its $4. This huge R-rated Chinese/Australian co-production will probably face lukewarm reviews and a bigger theater count than the German picture, resulting in a less stellar User Rating (though still around 7 probably) and far fewer PTA points (two, as predicted by Fantasy Moguls, seems to be the optimistic scenario). Under those circumstances, I would think twice before putting this one on any of my slates.

Before letting you go catch a showing of Iron Man (or perhaps Made of Honor, you know, to each his/her own), I thought it could be interesting to slip a few words about the upcoming Cannes Film festival which starts on May 14. Each year in France, it's a media frenzy, the French being so proud to organize every year the biggest Film Festival on the planet (huge grin). The repercussions are global for all the films put under the spotlights of the French Riviera. In 2007, No Country For Old Men, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Persepolis, Paranoid Park, Love Songs ... they all debuted on the Croisette, competing for the Palme d'Or that went to 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.

This year, the jury, headed by Sean Penn, will have to watch and decide between 22 films. Not all of them will be released later in the United States, but a dozen probably will. Of course, a lot of the attention will be drawn towards the aforementioned fourth Indiana Jones movie, or the new Woody Allen world premiere. Interest in the competition, however, should still be, as always, feverish. Among the films that will probably unleash the cinephile frenzy, a few are certain to be released in the coming months Stateside:

• Blindness, the new film by Fernando Meirelles, starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover and Gael Garcia Bernal, will open the festival. It's an adaptation of a novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jose Saramago.
• Guerilla and The Argentine, the two movies about Ernesto  "Che " Guevara made by Steven Soderbergh and starring Benicio Del Toro, will be screened as one 4-hour film, under the title Che. Probably the most anticipated screening of the festival.
• The Changeling will mark the return of Clint Eastwood to Cannes, four years after going home empty-handed following the debut of Mystic River. Clint has never won anything at Cannes (although Bird did win a Best Actor Prize for Forest Whitaker).
• With Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman makes his directorial debut and finds himself competing at Cannes with Philip Seymour Hoffman in front of the camera. Some might call that a promising start.
• Finally, the last American film to compete in Cannes will be Two Lovers. James Gray is back on the Croisette one year after We Own the Night, leaving gritty dramas for romance with Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow in the leads.

Will any of those films win the Golden Palm, or a secondary Prize? Or will it be Wim Wenders, Walter Salles, Atom Egoyan ... also present in the South of France next week? I will be watching the festival closely (not attending unfortunately), and getting ready to keep you informed, once it's over (by the end of May), about which films to watch for. Before that though, let's meet right here next week to discuss the arthouse releases of the weekend of May 30. I'll be counting on you!

If Indie Jones fails to show up with his column next week, then you'll know it's because, darn it all, he couldn't help absconding to the Riviera, disguising himself as Todd McCarthy, and attempting to sneak into the screening of Che. Send the authorities to danceswiththearthouse@gmail.com.