The French film “The Class,” a frank tale about classroom life using real students and teachers at a junior high school, won top honors Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival. This is the first French film to win the award since 1987.

Benicio Del Toro won Cannes’ best-actor prize for “Che,” Steven Soderbergh’s four-hour-plus epic about Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara.

Sandra Corveloni was chosen as best actress for “Linha de Passe,” in which she plays the mother of four brothers struggling to make better lives for themselves in a Brazilian slum. It was her first role in a feature

And the other top nods go to:
PALME D’OR
- Entre Les Murs (The Class), directed by Laurent Cantet

GRAND PRIX (Runner-up prize)
- Gomorra (Gomorrah) directed by Matteo Garrone

BEST DIRECTOR
- Nuri Bilge Ceylan for Three Monkeys

JURY PRIZE
- Il Divo directed by Paolo Sorrentino

BEST ACTOR
- Benicio del Toro in Che

BEST ACTRESS
- Sandra Corveloni in Linha de Passe (Line of Passage)

BEST SCREENPLAY
- Lorna’s Silence by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

CAMERA D’OR - Hunger, directed by Steve McQueen

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 25th, 2008 at 6:35 pm and is filed under Cannes, Ryan, Look! New!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.