Ken Loach’s “The Wind That Shakes the Barley,” about the Irish struggle for independence from Britain in the 1920s, won the Palme d’Or award for best picture at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday.
“Our film is a little step, a very little step, in the British confronting their imperialist history,” Loach, a 69-year-old Briton, said in accepting the award.
“Maybe if we tell the truth about the past, maybe we tell the truth about the present,” he said.
“The Wind That Shakes the Barley” is about a group of Irish Republicans fighting against the paramilitary “Black and Tans” for the end of British rule over Ireland. Loach has made films about political subjects throughout his career, including “Bread and Roses” and “My Name Is Joe.”
“Flanders,” directed by Bruno Dumont, won the festival’s Grand Prix award, the runner-up prize.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu of Mexico was voted best director by the nine-member jury, chaired this year by Chinese filmmaker Wong Kar Wai. Inarritu’s “Babel” is a patchwork of three stories involving families from three continents whose lives accidentally overlap. Inarritu’s previous films include “Amores Perros.”
The best-actor award went to the entire male cast of the French-Moroccan-Algerian film “Indigenes.” The film, set in 1943, deals with three North African youths who join the French army to fight the Nazis in World War II.
All the female performers of Pedro Almodovar’s “Volver,” among them Penelope Cruz and Carmen Maura, were awarded the best-actress prize. In the Spaniard’s film, a dead mother makes a comeback in the lives of her two grown-up daughters.
Almodovar, 54, received the best-script prize for “Volver” as well.
Over 11 days, 55 movies from 30 countries were screened, 48 of them world premieres, including “The Da Vinci Code.” Twenty films vied for the Palme d’Or.
Last year, the Palme d’Or went to “L’Enfant” (“The Child”) by the Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Jim Jarmusch’s “Broken Flowers” won the Grand Prix award.
