The White Ribbon Wins Cannes

French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg poses with the Best Actress award she received for the film 'Antichrist' during the awards ceremony during the 62nd International film festival in Cannes, southern France

Austrian director Michael Haneke’s somber drama The White Ribbon claimed the top prize Sunday at Cannes, where Quentin Tarantino and Lars von Trier entries earned the acting honors. It was a big night for Austria, whose triumphs included Christoph Waltz as best actor for Tarantino's World War II epic Inglourious Basterds. Charlotte Gainsbourg won the best-actress honor for von Trier's Antichrist, a film that riled and repelled many Cannes viewers with its explicit images of physical abuse involving a grieving couple.

Waltz earned the best-actor award for his gleefully homicidal role as Nazi Col. Hans Landa, renowned in Germany as an ace ''Jew hunter'' in Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino's rewrite of the history books that follows the exploits of a band of Jewish Allied commandos led by Brad Pitt.

The nine-member Cannes jury headed by French actress Isabelle Huppert, which included actresses Robin Wright Penn and Asia Argento and director James Gray, presented a special award to beloved French director Alain Resnaiss, who was in the competition with the offbeat tale Wild Grass. The film follows the odd relationships that spring up after a married man forges a relationship with a woman whose stolen wallet he recovers.

The directing award went to Filipino filmmaker Brillante Mendoza for Kinatay, a harsh story centered on police inflicting bloody retribution on a prostitute who crossed them.
Chinese director Lou Ye’s Spring Fever, a tale of forbidden romance involving homosexual relationships, won the screenplay award for writer Feng Mei.

The prize for best first film went to Australian writer-director Warwick Thornton for Samson and Delilah, his love story about two teens living in an isolated aboriginal community.