Marie Antoinette's Mops is top dog in Cannes

CANNES, France, May 26 (Reuters) The coveted prize for movies at Cannes may be the ''Palme d'Or'', but for those films' canine casts the Palm Dog is the only award worth winning.

A small French bulldog was the winner this year in the parallel event to the main film competition that has become a regular offbeat fixture at the festival.

Mops, who appeared in Sofia Coppola's zany costume drama ''Marie Antoinette'', faced stiff competition from two other dogs appearing in movies in the line-up for the main prize -- one in ''Red Road'' and the other in ''Lights in the Dusk''.

Palm Dog host Toby Rose said Coppola's film on the Queen of France had been a ''dog fest'', with dozens of hounds crawling around in the Versailles palace and the queen's own dog ''Mops'' -- identified as a French bulldog -- being the clear winner.

''From the very outset, Marie Antoinette -- played by Kirsten Dunst -- is crucially dog-orientated,'' Rose said after the prize-giving ceremony by the beach in Cannes, for which neither Mops nor Coppola were present.

''When she goes from Austria to Paris to be with Louis, she has to leave behind all of her past, which is Austria, and the most awful wrench is when she left Mops, her dog, behind at the border,'' Rose told Reuters.

Runners-up included a Schnauzer featuring in German movie ''Ping Pong'' called Schumann.

''He's a shooting star and the whole world will know it,'' Ping Pong director Matthias Luthardt told Reuters, as he carried the honourable prize band around his own neck in the absence of Schumann.

REUTERS DH RN0245