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what happened then?

The French have triumphed in this year’s Cannes Film Festival, with Entre les Murs (The Class) winning the coveted Palme d'Or.



Juror Sean Penn thought the film was so good, he used the same word twice to describe it. ‘[The Class is] an amazing, amazing film’. Insightful.

Directed by Laurent Cantet, The Class follows the tough times of a tough school-teacher working in a tough multi-cultural school. The film used entirely non-professional actors, including the teacher played by François Begaudeau who in fact penned the best-selling autobiographical novel on which the film is based.



Italian mafia film (Italian? Mafia? Film? Surely not.) Gomorrah won the Grand Prix runner-up prize while Irish movie Hunger nabbed the Camera d'Or for first feature film. It is a bleak portrayal of the last six weeks of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands' life.



Actors to grab gongs included the oddly attractive Benicio Del Toro, who won best actor for his lead role in Che, Steven Soderbergh's biopic of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.

And lifetime achievement awards went to Hollywood stalwarts Clint Eastwood and Catherine Deneuve, both of whom picked up their awards at the closing ceremony on Sunday night.

winners in full...

Palme d'Or - The Class
Grand Prix - Gomorrah
Special prizes - Clint Eastwood and Catherine Deneuve
Best director - Nuri Bilge Ceylan for Three Monkeys
Jury prize - Il Divo directed by Paolo Sorrentino
Best actor - Benicio del Toro (above) in Che
Best actress - Sandra Corveloni in Line of Passage
Best screenplay - Lorna's Silence by Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Camera d'Or - Hunger

Read our other Cannes bits and bobs here and there.