Although still better known as the poker-faced foil to Annie Lennox's extravagant pop diva in 1980s electro combo The Eurythmics, Dave A Stewart has been working in multimedia for some years now. In 1998 alone, the year before his debut movie went into production, Stewart reckoned to have produced four albums and written two screenplays. Still, though, he finds that people have a hard time taking him seriously as a director.

"Eventually, after years and years and years, I think people accept that I do different things," he told Moving Pictures. "It is quite funny ­ people think that if you're talented at, say, playing the guitar, you must only play the guitar. I mean, Dennis Hopper's a great actor but he's also a great photographer. I happen to be a person who's always been obsessed with music and imagery together, but I've made lots of shorts that have nothing to do with music. This, for me, is a natural progression."

Starring three-quarters of girl group All Saints, Honest is a role-reversal riff on the standard British crime caper. The trio play the Chase sisters, streetwise East End girls who carry out a string of daring robberies disguised as men. While planning a raid on a jewellery shop, one of the sisters, Gerry (Nicole Appleton), bumps into Oxford student Daniel (Peter Facinelli), who's working on the same floor for a radical hippie magazine. When Daniel subsequently stumbles on their racket, he falls for Gerry and becomes smitten with her criminal lifestyle, which turns potentially lethal when maverick Mandy (Natalie Appleton) strikes out on her own.

It is, promises Stewart, "a hippie, trippy, funny, romantic, violent, full of great music, psychedelic, sexy East End gangster love story." And with another script under his belt in the meantime, it seems likely that Stewart ­ a fan of Cannes, returning for his second year as filmmaker ­ will be looking to make a few more deals on the Croisette. "It's a place where everybody converges to talk about the same thing," he shrugs. "I don't know why people knock it. Basically, if you like making films, it's very good fun being with other people who like making films. It's better than being at an accountants' convention."

Damon Wise