CANNES, May 17: American film-maker Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," a savage indictment of President Bush's handling of Iraq and the war on terror, was cheered and applauded at the Cannes film festival on Monday.

"It is a such total mess. Their way of doing things has offended so many people," Moore said. The Oscar-winning director's fast-moving film is a telling work of propaganda by a moviemaker whose mission to deride Bush exudes from every frame.

It focuses on how America and the White House reacted to the September 11, 2001 hijacking attacks and traces links between the Bush family and prominent Saudis, including the family of Osama bin Laden,

"We had a president who was asleep at the wheel," Moore said. Fahrenheit 9/11 has already whipped up an international media storm after the Walt Disney Co barred its Miramax film unit from releasing such a politically polarising work in a U.S. election year.

"I hope it comes out in America this year," said Moore. "I do think it is important to care at times like this. This time I was the straight man and Bush wrote the funniest lines," he added of a film that constantly mocks the president. "The fish rots from the head down."

The British PM gets only a brief mention in the film but Moore said after the screening: "What is he doing hanging out with a guy like George W. Bush? I have never understood that - it's the weirdest couple I have ever seen."

In the light of the current controversy over pictures of Iraqi prisoners being abused, his latest film is right up to date in showing American soldiers in the field mocking and posing with hooded Iraqi prisoners.

As the film starts, the screen goes dark. The sound is of planes crashing into the Twin Towers before the grief of victims' families is contrasted with Bush sitting, apparently impassively, in a Florida schoolroom for nine minutes after hearing the news.

Moore shows members of the Laden family being flown out of the U.S after Sept 11. Up surges the song: "I gotta get out of this place." -Reuters