Roman Polanski's highly personal film about the Holocaust, The Pianist, won the Palme d'Orat the Cannes Film Festival today.
The film stars Adrien Brody as a brilliant Polish pianist who manages to escape the Warsaw ghetto. As boy in Poland, Polanski himself survived the Krakow ghetto but lost his mother at a Nazi camp.
Second place, or the grand prize, went to The Man Without a Past, by Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki, a whimsical tale of an amnesia victim who rediscovers life and love in the slums of Helsinki. Best actress went to Kati Outinen, who played a Salvation Army worker who falls in love with the amnesia victim.
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Cannes Film Festival Judges: (from left) Brazilian director Walter Salles, US actor Sharon Stone and chairman of the panel, US director David Lynch. Photo: Reuters
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"I'm honoured and moved to accept this prize for a film that represents Poland," said 68-year-old director Polanski, who was born in France but moved to Poland with his parents two years before the outbreak of the Second World War.
Best director went to US director Paul Thomas Anderson for his darkly comic
Punch-Drunk Love, starring Adam Sandler and Emily Watson, and also to Im Kwon-taek, the South Korean director of
Chihwaseon, a beautifully filmed look at the life of a 19th-century Korean painter.
Best actor went to Belgium's Olivier Gourmet of The Sonby Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Gourmet played a man who refuses to take a boy into his carpentry workshop, then becomes obsessed with him and follows him through the streets.
A special prize marking Cannes' 55th anniversary went to Michael Moore, whose Bowling for Columbinetook a scathing look at the gun culture in the United States, starting with the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. It was the first documentary screened in the main competition in 46 years.
The jury prize, another special honour, went to Divine Interventionby Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, a film that took the risk of using humour to depict the tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Best screenplay went to Paul Laverty for Sweet Sixteen, British director Ken Loach's tale of a young boy struggling against the odds in Glasgow, Scotland.
This year's jury was headed by director David Lynch, and also included actresses Sharon Stone and Michelle Yeoh and director Walter Salles.
AP