Screen Daily - Laurent Cantet’s The Class (Entre Les Murs) has taken this year’s Palme d’Or.
The film is a Paris classroom drama-documentary based on a novel by Francois Begaudeau, who plays a teacher in the film working in a tough Parisian neighbourhood.
Screen’s four-star review describes it as offering “a rich microcosm of today’s multi-ethnic French population.”
Jury president Sean Penn said the decision to give the award to Cantet’s “amazing, amazing film” was unanimous.
It was the first Palme D’Or win for a French film since Maurice Pialat’s Sous Le Soleil De Satan in 1987.
The jury Grand Prix went to Matteo Garrone’s Gomorrah. Screen described the film as “probably the most authentic and unsentimental mafia movie ever to come out of Italy”.
The Jury Prize was won by Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo, which Screen described as “enjoyably original, lurid, sardonic political opera.”
Best director was Nuri Bilge Ceylan for Three Monkeys.
Steve McQueen’s Hunger about IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands took the Camera d’Or prize.
Benicio Del Toro won best actor for Steven Soderbergh’s Che (click for review), while Sandra Corveloni won best actress for Linha De Passe… [Full Story]















