French ‘The Class’ wins Palme d’Or

Not Clint Eastwood’s ‘Changeling,’ not Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Che.’ Not Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Synecdoche, New York’ and not even the rumored documentary ‘Waltz With Bashir’ went home with a Palme d’Or. It was the French picture ‘Entre les murs’ (’The Class’) that got the highest prize of the Cannes Film Festival. It’s a film about the high tension and energy in the classroom today, a hot topic in France.

“I think it would be good for all those people who claim to be able to judge youth … in two or three aphorisms to learn something new about youth,” the main actor of the movie said. Jury president Sean Penn called it “an amazing, amazing [...] virtually seamless film. All the performances, magic. All the writing, magic. It just touched us so deeply.“

As a consolation prize for Steven Soderbergh, Benicio del Toro was crowned Best Actor for leading in ‘Che.’ “I’d like to dedicate this to the man himself, Che Guevara,” he said. Clint Eastwood got his consolation prize in the form of a “special prize of the 61st Cannes Film Festival,” but he wasn’t at the ceremony to collect it.