The prize, awarded by a jury headed by Sean Penn, came at the end of the world’s most prestigious film festival.
French movie The Class, about life in a tough Paris school, has won the coveted Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Directed by Laurent Cantet, The Class uses real students and teachers to chronicle a year in their lives.
Hunger, a portrayal of the last six weeks of IRA hunger striker Bobby
Sands’ life, took the Camera d’Or prize for best first feature film.
Benicio Del Toro won best actor for his lead role in Steven Soderbergh’s biopic of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.
“I’d like to dedicate this to the man himself, Che Guevara,” he told the audience.
Brazilian star Sandra Corveloni won best actress for playing a pregnant mother of four in Sao Paolo in Line of Passage.
Clint Eastwood and Catherine Deneuve won lifetime achievement awards at the French festival’s closing ceremony.
Based on an autobiographical novel by young teacher Francois
Begaudeau, The Class was praised as “an amazing, amazing film” by Penn.
Italian mafia movie Gomorrah, set in Naples and based on a novel by Roberto Saviana, took the runner-up prize.
