For a festival that in recent years has been mostly about extravagant beach parties, topless starlets at hotel pools along the Croisette and the handing out of awards to films no one's heard of, this was a major leap into the age of global news. Moore's win was a big story with a nasty political edge to it and it came with all the built-in visuals that television news channels need in order to make stories work. Looking back now from the perspective of nearly a month's developments, it's possible to see how he was able to turn a small political documentary into what's now a high profile brand name film with global recognition.

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