Cannes Film Festival: A powerful Belgian drama in which a young man sells his baby son took the major prize, the Palme d'Or, at the closing ceremony of the 58th Festival de Cannes on Saturday night.
The film, L'Enfant (The Child) was written and directed by brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. The award was presented by Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman, both of whom won Oscars this year for Million Dollar Baby.
L'Enfant features Jérémie Reinier as a feckless young man who lives off petty theft. When a criminal contact tells him that people will pay money on the black market to adopt a child illegally, he seizes upon the opportunity, casually telling his distraught girlfriend that they can have another child.
A serious, socially concerned drama, it is infused with tension that never slackens its grip on the viewer. It marks the second time in six years that the Dardennes have won the Palme d'Or, which they first received for their equally bleak and edgy 1999 film, Rosetta.
They now join an elite group of filmmakers who have won the coveted award twice, the others being Francis Ford Coppola, Bille August, Shohei Imamura, and Emir Kusturica, who was the president of the jury at Cannes this year. The nine-member jury also included actors Javier Bardem and Salma Hayek, novelist Toni Morrison, and directors John Woo and Agnes Varda. In their modest acceptance speech, the Dardennes dedicated their award to French journalist Florence Aubenas and her driver Hussein Hanoun, who have been missing since they were held hostage in Iraq in January.
L'Enfant was one of four competition entries at Cannes this year from former winners of the Palme d'Or, but there were no awards for the other three - Lars von Trier with Manderlay, Wim Wenders with Don't Come Knocking, and Gus Van Sant with Last Days. Of the 21 feature films in competition, 15 went home empty-handed.
This year's runner-up prize, the Grand Prix du Jury, went to US director Jim Jarmusch for Broken Flowers, the only comedy in a competition selection dominated by the themes of guilt, misery, exploitation and violence. His film features Bill Murray as a confirmed bachelor revisiting women from his past when he learns he has a 19-year-old son.
Broken Flowers and L'Enfant were critical favourites at the festival and hotly tipped for awards at the weekend, as was Caché (Hidden), the new French-set drama from Austrian director Michael Haneke, who was named best director in this year's Cannes awards. It features Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche as a married couple whose comfortable bourgeois existence is disturbed when they receive a series of videotapes revealing a dark secret from the husband's past.
The best actor award went to Tommy Lee Jones for the modern western, The Three Burials of Melquiades Esatrada, which also marks Jones's directing debut for the cinema at the age of 58. It took a second prize on Saturday night when the award for best screenplay was presented to Guillermo Arriaga, the Mexican writer who also scripted 21 Grams and Amores Perros.
Hanna Laslo, a popular Israeli film, TV and stage performer, was named best actress for her portrayal of a beleaguered taxi driver in Amos Gitai's film, Free Zone, which received mixed reviews at the festival. Laslo dedicated her award to her mother, a Holocaust survivor.
The minor award, Le Prix du Jury, was given to Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai for the 1960s-set drama, Shanghai Dreams, the only one of the five Asian films in competition to take a prize.
The Camera d'Or for best first film in any section of the festival was shared between Miranda July's US entry, Me and You and Everyone We Know, and Sri Lankan director Vimukthi Jayasundara's The Foresaken Land.
There were two further prizes for Caché when it was named best film by the Ecumenical Jury and by the panel representing the international film critics' group, FIPRESCI.
This year's festival drew more international delegates than ever before, reaffirming its status as the world's leading film festival and generating an estimated €120-150 million for the Cannes area over its 12-day duration.