May 24--Director Jacques Audiard's film "Dheepan," a drama about three Tamil exiles trying to reconstruct their lives in France, has won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
"These people are running away from a tragedy," Audiard told L.A. Times film critic Kenneth Turan earlier this week, "and I didn't want it to have anything to do with post-colonial France. Sri Lanka seemed like the end of the earth for me; before embarking on this project I couldn't have located it on a map."
"Son of Saul," about an Auschwitz Sonderkommando work unit, won the Grand Prix award, while best director went to Taiwan's Hou Hsiao-hsien for the martial arts film "The Assassin"
A complete report from Cannes will follow. Below is the full list of winners:
Palme d'Or: "Dheepan," Jacques Audiard
Grand Prix: "Son of Saul," Laszlo Nemes
Best director: Hou Hsiao-hsien, "The Assassin"
Jury prize: "The Lobster," Yorgos Lanthimos
Best screenplay: Michael Franco, "Chronic"
Best actress: Rooney Mara, "Carol"; and Emmanuelle Bercot, "Mon Roi"
Best actor: Vincent Lindon, "La Loi du Marche"
Palme d'Or, short film: "Waves '98," Ely Dagher
Camera d'Or: "La Tierra y La Sombra," Cesar Augusto Acevedo
Honorary Palme d'Or: Agnes Varda
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