Based on the true story of the wrongful conviction of black boxer Rubin Carter, the film has been criticised for bending the facts, which may have damaged its chances, but its star, Denzel Washington, appears in the best actor category.
He's also the third best boxer on the planet, who will face the planet's best boxer this weekend in the biggest sporting event of the year.
"He is a very good boxer, obviously with the height and the reach and the good movement," Khan said.
My play No Guts, No Heart, No Glory is not about being a Pakistani or a Muslim or even about being a boxer.
I was a boxer as a kid, from the age of nine to about 17.
He is planning to direct again, too: his adaptation of Jon Hotten's The Years of the Locust, the true story of a naïve boxer and his manipulative promoter, is set to go into production next year.
At one corner of the berm, a group of Iraqi army soldiers in boxer shorts and T-shirts caked with dust and sweat stood dazed under a scorching sun.
Then, on the first Thursday of Cannes 2012, came Rust and Bone and Matthias Schoenaerts – playing a bare-knuckle boxer opposite Marion Cotillard – was suddenly the hottest discovery on the Croisette.
He invited Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, the former boxer he played, and who spent 20 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, to join him on stage and said: "This man is love".
He backs away, however, and finally hands the gun over to Hubert, the black boxer who is the most philosophical of the gang and totally against violence.
