Fresh faces, activist cinema capture Cannes gold

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2008

CANNES, France (AFP) — The Cannes film festival wrapped up Sunday after awarding its top prize to a French classroom drama with a cast of amateurs in a banner year for movies with a conscience.

In a popular choice, the jury led by US actor-director Sean Penn gave the festival's coveted Palme d'Or to "The Class", featuring a multicultural cast of first-time teenage actors all plucked from the same Parisian secondary school.

The picture, shot in documentary style and based on the bestselling memoir of French teacher Francois Begaudeau, beat out 21 other contenders to claim the trophy in a year dominated by dark dramas on social ills.

"The film had to show society as a whole -- it had to be diverse, teeming, complex -- and it also needed to show the social...