Cannes: Amy Winehouse biopic premieres

Amy, the biopic of the late singer Amy Winehouse by Senna director Asif Kapadia held its world premiere on Saturday (16 May) at the Cannes film festival.

The documentary shows the singer from an early age through to her death in 2011 through home videos by people around her. Traditional voxpops are not used and voice overs are heard over the clips.

The film has been widely well-received at the festival and Kapadia couldn't have been happier when he arrived at the party on the Croisette.

"I mean it's always a dream, if you make a film, the ultimate place you want to premiere your film in Cannes, so it's the ultimate for a film maker. It's where you want to be," he said. "But with Amy she's such a star it felt like, if we could, that's the place we wanted the film to open and the reaction has been amazing. I've being doing press most of the day so I've not had much chance to read the reviews but I've seen the headlines and so far, it's been unbelievable -- so so happy, really happy."

Amy has faced some harsh criticism, though, from Mitch Winehouse, Amy's father, who insisted he wanted to disconnect himself from the film and it was reported he wanted to seek legal action.

"It wasn't the intention to upset anyone, but just to show what was going on in her life," Kapadia said. "There's a lot of turmoil, there's a lot of stuff going on in her life and that's why things turned out the way they did. That's it really."

The producer of the film, James Gay-Rees, also agreed with Kapadia about the criticism, saying: "It's very hard. It's his daughter at the end of the day and it's his right to have those feelings about it, but we basically were very objective about the film. We were asked to make the film. We went in with a blank piece of paper and did a lot of research for a couple of years and this is our findings from the research so we think it's balanced."

Amy Winehouse's record label Universal Records were the hosts of the pre-carpet bash and a number of their artists came out, including Emeli Sande, Leona Lewis and Haim.

The cocktail party also attracted the likes of Warhorse star Jeremy Irvine and Bad Lieutenant director Abel Ferrara. Ferrara described the singer as a "brilliant artist" and there was "not enough of that music".