THE new documentary by Scotland-based film maker Mark Cousins, about one of cinema's greatest directors, is to have its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival next month.

Cousins will unveil The Eyes of Orson Welles as part of the famous French festival's official selection.

The film is based on "unprecedented and exclusive access" to private drawings and paintings by Welles, the iconic movie maker and director of Citizen Kane.

Beatrice Welles, the daughter of the director, granted Cousins, who lives and works in Edinburgh, the right to make a film around her father's artworks, which he created and kept from an early age.

Welles, regularly regarded as one of cinema's great directors, trained first as a graphic artist before finding fame as an actor and director – on radio, on stage and in the cinema.

Films such as Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil and Chimes of Midnight made him one of the most celebrated directors of the 20th century.

However, Welles continued to draw and paint throughout his life and when he died in 1985, he left behind hundreds of character sketches, set designs, visualisations of unmade projects, illustrations, doodles in the margins of personal letters, and portraits of people and places.

Cousins builds his film around these images, and Beatrice Welles also appears in the film to comment on the art and its relation to her father's life and work.

The film has been executive produced by the documentary maker Michael Moore.

Mark Bell, the BBC’s commissioning editor for arts, said: "Mark Cousins’ film captures a mercurial genius in flight.

"It is a brilliantly personable, personal journey into the mind of a complex fugitive figure – Welles remains playful, larger than life yet often curiously elusive.

"By the end I feel I know him better."

Mark Thomas, a screen officer at Creative Scotland, said: “We are delighted that Mark Cousins’ feature documentary The Eyes of Orson Welles will receive its world premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

" Cannes is a fitting platform to present a compelling new story of one of cinema’s greatest icons.

"We are proud to have supported this latest work from Mark, a unique filmmaker and celebrated cineaste, and we wish everyone involved with the film the very best for the premiere."

The film is directed, written, filmed and narrated by Cousins.

The exact date of the screening is yet to be confirmed.

The Eyes of Orson Welles is produced by Mary Bell and Adam Dawtrey for Bofa Productions, in association with BBC Arts and Filmstruck, supported by the National Lottery via Creative Scotland’s Screen Fund.

Cousins, originally from Northern Ireland, includes The Story of Film: An Odyssey, A Story of Children and Film, I Am Belfast, an essay film about his home town; and his fiction debut Stockholm My Love, a musical starring and with music by Neneh Cherry.