French film The Class won the top prize at Cannes Film Festival.
The documdrama about school life, which used real students and teachers to chronicle what unfolds over the course of a year, was directed by Laurent Cantet. It is the firstFrench film to win thePalm d'Or since 1987 film Under Satan's Sun.
The win was a unanimous decision among the nine-member Cannes jury, said the head of the panel Sean Penn.
There was also good news for the UK, with the prize for first-time director going to London-born filmmaker Steve McQueen's Hunger. The film tracese the last six weeks of the life of hunger striker Bobby Sands. Benicio Del Toro was named best-actor prize for taking the lead role in Steven Soderbergh's four-hour-plus epic about revolutionary Che Guevara. Presented as two films - which was no doubt a relief for those with a week bladder - Che follows Guevara and Fidel Castro's triumphant guerrilla campaign to overthrow Cuba's government in the late 1950s and Guevara's downfall and execution in Bolivia in the 1960s. Del Toro said: "I'd like to dedicate this to the man himself, Che Guevara" Sandra Corveloni was chosen as best actress for Linha De Passe, in which she plays a mum struggling in a Brazilian slum.
The Grand Prize and Jury Prize both went to Italian films - Matteo Garrone's Napolese underworld film Gomorrah and Paolo Sorrentino's portraite of Guilio Andreotti, Il Divo.
The best director award was given to Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan for Three Monkeys, about a man who carries the can for his employer's crime in exchange for cash support for his wife and son, only to reap the bitter consequences.
The screenplay prize was scooped by two-time Palme d'Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne for Lorna's Silence, about an immigrant woman's marriage of convenience to gain citizenship.
Special jury prizes were given to Clint Eastwood, whose film Changeling was in competition, and Catherine Deneuve, who performed in two films at the festival.
Penn praised the high standard of films. He said: "There was a field of such powerful, emotional, moving movies, performances. There was so many times that we thought, it just can't get better."
