French Classroom Drama Wins Top Prize at Cannes Film Festival

Jurors at Cannes, the world's biggest film festival, gave their most prestigious prize last night to a realistic drama of a year in the life of a French classroom.

Laurent Cantet's Entre les Mers - English title The Class - won the Palme d'Or, the first French film in more than 20 years to walk away with the top prize.

In a thin year for British films, Steve McQueen, the Turner prize-winning artist, won the Caméra d'Or which is given to first-time feature film directors. He won for Hunger, a harrowing and, for some, difficult to watch recreation of the last six weeks of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands.

Cantet's film had won positive reviews as a well-made, humorous film, but not much of a buzz. The film is based on a semi-autobiographical novel by François Begaudeau about his experience of teaching in an inner-city Paris school. Begaudeau played the teacher.

Cantet, in his acceptance speech, said: "The film we wanted to make had to be a reflection of French society - multiple, many-faceted, complex."

The jury, headed by Sean Penn, gave the best actor prize to Puerto-Rican born Benicio del Toro for his extraordinary portrayal of Che Guevara in Steven Soderbergh's diptych, Che. Sandra Corveloni won best actress for her role in the Brazilian film Linha de Passe.

There was nothing for the four American directors: Clint Eastwood for Changeling, Charlie Kaufman for the impenetrable Synecdoche, James Gray for Two Lovers and Soderbergh's Che.

Instead the best director award was given to Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan for Three Monkeys.