Evergreen actor Dev Anand Tuesday said he was happy to be invited to the forthcoming Cannes Film Festival, which is screening his film "Guide" in its 'Classics' section.

"I have never attended any Cannes fest earlier. So, I am very happy to receive an invitation to attend it. I am indeed more pleased because my 'Guide' is being shown in the 'Classics' section, which I understand is a sideshow of the main festival," Dev Anand told.

"I am excited because I will have a chance to interact with film luminaries of the world there," the octogenarian actor said. The festival opens in the city of Cannes in France in May.

In "Guide", Dev Anand plays the role of a tour guide who finds himself entangled in the affairs of a woman caught in a marital discord that drives him to the brink of his own life.

Based on R.K. Narayan's novel of the same name, the 1965 classic has Waheeda Rehman in the most fascinating role of her career. It gave her a chance not only to prove her histrionic abilities, but her dancing talent as well.

Inaugurated in 2004, the Cannes Classics sidebar is a section that centres on screening a selection of new or restored prints of classic films, tributes to foreign cinema, documentaries on filmmaking, and occasionally rare or rediscovered footage of from days gone by, according to the festival catalogue.

The names of movies to be shown in this section will, however, be announced officially only a week before the fest.

Dev Anand, meanwhile, has approached Hyderabad's Goldstone Technologies Ltd to recolourise and restore the prints of the classic before it is screened at Cannes.