French film ''Class'' wins top prize at Cannes

(FROM VARIETY) ? Laurent Cantet?s The Class (Entre les murs) won the Palme d?Or at the 61st Cannes Film Festival, the first French movie to take the top prize since Under Satan’s Sun did it in 1987. Class depicts contemporary society as seen through a year?s events in a Paris junior high school classroom. Jury president Sean Penn called it an ”amazing, amazing film.” ”All the performances, magic. All the writing, magic. It just touched us so deeply,” Penn said at the jury press conference. The runner-up Grand Prix award went to Gomorrah, Italian director Matteo Garrone?s movie about organized crime in Naples. Nuri Bilge Ceylan won the directing prize for Three Monkeys, a drama about family pulled apart by crime and suspicion. The jury prize went to Paolo Sorrentino?s Il Divo, a caustic, stylish look at former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. (Variety)