So far six Malaysian families and one Chinese family have received the money, and insurers are assessing the claims of 40 more Chinese families.

Relatives of all 239 missing passengers can claim up to $175,000 each.

Flight MH370 went missing on 8 March as it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. No trace of the plane has been found.

Malaysian deputy foreign minister Hamzah Zainudin stressed that the government has not yet declared the plane lost.

“When we talk about the full payment, we have to wait until we announce the issue on the tragedy MH370 is over,” he said.

Malaysia Airlines’ insurer, a consortium led by Germany’s Allianz, is making the payments.

Many of the relatives also refuse to accept that their relatives may be dead.

A group of families has joined together to raise $5m (£2.9m) to investigate the plane’s disappearance and encourage anyone who might have information to come forward.

A massive search operation conducted in seas hundreds of miles from any land has failed to find any debris from the plane.

Experts are continuing to survey the sea floor and are bringing in specialist equipment.

They believe the jet ended its journey in the Indian Ocean, hundreds of miles north-west of the Australian city of Perth.

Speaking at the Cannes film festival, Paul told the Hollywood Reporter the drama – titled Vanishing Act “will not affect any passengers’ families”.

 

The search is continuing for the Boeing 777 plane, which disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board.

The film is expected to be ready for an autumn release date. Paul insisted he was not exploiting the ongoing search.

“The controversy will help indirectly, but we are not cashing in on the flight,” he said.

The director added there had been a lot of interest in the film, particularly from Asian markets.

Paul is in Cannes to promote several of his films including Kamasutra 3D and The Monologues Of A Sex Maniac.

Never one to shy away from controversy, his first movie was titled The Temptations Between My Legs.

With much of the global film industry in Cannes last weekend, many other films have been announced and secured funding or distribution deals.

Trade website, Variety, has reported that Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Wes Anderson and David Fincher had all agreed to appear in an Alfred Hitchcock documentary.

The film, directed by Kent Jones, is based on the recordings that led to Francois Truffaut’s 1966 book, Cinema According to Hitchcock, which many filmmakers describe as the bible of cinema.

It is due to be released in spring 2015.