A French film about an inspired teacher in a rough Parisian school won the Palme d'Or top prize at Cannes on Sunday, the first homegrown movie in two decades to claim the coveted award.

'The Class' by 46-year-old director Laurent Cantet features a multicultural cast of amateur actors all plucked from the same French school. It beat out 21 other contenders to claim the trophy.

"It is a microcosm of the world, where issues of equality or inequality play out," said Cantet, flanked by two dozen of its pupils, as he accepted the prize from actor-director Robert De Niro.

'The Class' is Cantet's fourth feature and picks up on early themes in his work about social alienation. Its relevance has been pointed up by ongoing street protests by French schoolchildren and teachers against cutbacks.

It is the first French Cannes winner since Maurice Pialat took home the gold for 'Under the Sun of Satan' in 1987.

Best actors

The best actor prize went to Oscar-winner Benicio Del Toro for his virtuoso performance as "Che" Guevara in Steven Soderbergh's four-hour-plus epic on the Latin American revolutionary hero.

Brazil's Sandra Corveloni won the best actress prize for her riveting turn as a pregnant single mother of four in Sao Paulo in 'Line of Passage', co-directed by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas.

The 43-year-old Corveloni, in her first feature film, plays weary cleaning woman Clueza, whose sons battle against the odds against slipping into a life of crime.

Best director honours went to Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan, an arthouse favourite, for his searing, visually rich family drama 'Three Monkeys'.

The runner-up grand jury prize went to Italian anti-mafia drama 'Gomorrah' based on an international bestseller. Another film about corruption in Italy, 'Il Divo', also scooped up honours.

Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, two-time Palme d'Or winners, claimed best screenplay for 'The Silence of Lorna' on illegal immigration.

"Amazing, amazing film"

'Hunger', a biopic on Northern Irish prisoner Bobby Sands who died on a hunger strike, won the Camera d'Or prize for best first feature.

Lifetime achievement awards went to US actor-director Clint Eastwood, who was in the running with 'The Exchange' starring Angelina Jolie as a single mother whose son is kidnapped, and French actress Catherine Deneuve, who appeared in the darkly funny competition entry 'A Christmas Tale'.

Jury president Sean Penn selected the winners with a nine-member panel including actress Natalie Portman and Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron.

He said the prize for 'The Class' had been a unanimous decision "for an amazing, amazing film".

New York Times critic A.O. Scott said Cantet had attacked a familiar storyline "with freshness and precision, and without a trace of sentimentality".

The politically-minded Penn (47) had kicked off the movie world's most prestigious showcase on 14 March saying the winning filmmaker would be one who "is very aware of the times in which he or she lives".

He added in an interview with a French newspaper at the weekend that the duty of Cannes was to "do just the opposite" of the Oscars and crown a groundbreaking, unconventional picture.

The 61st edition was dominated by hard-hitting films grappling with war, disease, poverty and corruption in what many cinema aficionados called a below-par competition.

Jury surprised

The jury surprised many by shutting out Israel's 'Waltz With Bashir', a first-ever animated documentary at Cannes that offered an unflinching look at the 1982 slaughter of Palestinian refugees in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila camps.

Other highlights came outside the competition, including the first Indiana Jones movie in two decades, and 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona', a warmly-received Woody Allen comedy starring Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson.

Argentinian soccer legend Diego Maradona and former bad-boy boxer Mike Tyson also turned up on the French Riviera for flattering biopics on their chequered lives.

And as in every year, there were a few howlers that left audiences baffled about their selection, including 'Serbis', a Filipino picture set in a porn cinema, and French drama 'Frontier of Dawn' which Variety magazine called "a risible slice of pretentious hokum".

Last year, the Cannes jury gave the Palme d'Or to '4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days', a wrenching Romanian drama about an illegal abortion that became an international arthouse hit.

AFP