Police anger at French film

Stefano Cassetti plays the lead role in the film

CANNES, France -- A French film about a psychotic who escapes from an asylum and kills two policemen led to a protest outside the Cannes Film Festival's headquarters.

Witnesses said police refused to stand guard on the red-carpeted steps leading up to the official screening of director Cedric Kahn's "Roberto Succo" on Monday after learning of its violent content.

"Roberto Succo" tells the true story of a young Italian who goes mad after the death of his parents and wanders through south-eastern France, killing several people, two of them policemen.

It is one of 23 films competing for the festival's prestigious Palme d'Or award.

"Our aim is not to infringe on freedom of expression, which we believe in, but to defend the memory of our colleagues," said Laurent Picon of the Alliance Police Nationale union.

The union plans to stage a protest in the Riviera resort on Wednesday and will hand out leaflets denouncing the film outside one of the Paris cinemas where it is due to open to the public.

"He killed these people in cold blood and we're worried about the film's impact on young people. It's inadmissible," Picon said.

Picon said his union opposed the publicity surrounding the film, although they were not demanding its withdrawal from cinemas.

Kahn hastened to defend his work, saying he had deliberately avoided portraying the protagonist as a hero.

"I wanted to avoid two traps: Making Succo into a victim of society, or inversely, a bloody monster, which in my eyes would have been two ways of making him a hero," he told a news conference.

Reuters contributed to this report.