The Palme D’Or (and the rest of the prizes at Cannes) was given out on Sunday and this time around the winner was Laurent Cantet’s “Entre Les Murs” (”The Class”), a story about a teacher teaching in the 20th quarter and the difficulties his students face in terms of French identity. “The docudrama was shot in a raw, improvisational style to chronicle the drama that unfolds over one school year.” [AP] “Based on a best-selling autobiographical novel by François Bégaudeau, who plays the main character, The Class is given great life by the performances of the nonprofessional actors playing the students. Mr. Cantet brought them onstage with him to accept the prize, and they brought the entire Palais des Festivals to its feet. [NYTimes]

to listen to a podcast with the director.

The other prizes included the following:

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Cannes continues on and yesterday saw the premiere the latest by the Dardenne Brothers, Lorna’s Silence. The brothers (to the right) from Belgium are best known for their realist and disorientating visions of working people:

Palme d’Or laureates for Rosetta in 1999 and L’Enfant (The Child) in 2005, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne return to Festival Competition with Lorna’s Silence. The filmmaking brothers have also served as Presidents of the Cinéfondation and Short Films Juries (in 2000) and of the Caméra d’Or Jury in 2006. In their latest feature, they take another plunge into their hometown, Liège, Belgium, to explore the character of Lorna, a young Albanian woman drawn by love into a sordid plot. The predicament will quickly take on tragic proportions, and the weight of silence will become increasingly heavy to bear. [CANNES]

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The Cannes Film Festival is underway! Which means I get to spend my time on the internet seeing how some of my most anticipated films of the year are received by critics and also that I get to look at pictures of some of my favorite people!

To the right is Jia Zhangke - director of 24 City with his muse Tao Zhao and Joan Chen. 24 City like much of Jia’s recent work looks at a China in transformation. And like his prior work it blurs the ever-changing line between fact and fiction, as he explained at the film’s press conference:

China is going through a huge transformation as it makes the transition from a planned economy to the free market. I really wanted to make a film about this reality, this new influence on people’s lives. I began by filming about a hundred interviews with workers. Then, I asked myself about the idea of combining the two genres: having a documentary part followed by a fiction part. Isn’t that the best way to get information full of the depth necessary to speak of History with a capital H?”

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