Cinefiles rejoice: Haneke finally wins Palm d'Or for 'The White Ribbon'

'Inglourious Basterds' wins acting award, Charlotte Gainsbourg wins best actress

By Gregory Ellwood Sunday, May 24, 2009 2:20 PM

Michael Haneke doesn't look to thrilled to have won the Palm d'Or at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival.

Credit: AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau

The world's critics may not have found many films to get overjoyed about during this year's 62nd Cannes Film Festival, but the grand jury had to reward someone and they found a worthy candidate.

Acclaimed director Michael Haneke, who had never won the festival's top award despite having four masterworks play in competition, finally received the Palm d'Or for his latest, the somber drama "The White Ribbon." The filmmaker is best known in the United States for "Caché," which was inexplicably not nominated for the best foreign language Oscar in 2006, and "Funny Games," which the director remade for English speaking audiences in a new version starring Naomi Watts and Tim Roth.

Other winners at Cannes included "A Prophet," which provided noted French director Jacques Adiard the second-place prize and

Charlotte Gainsbourg won best actress for her role in Lars Von Trier's controversial "Antichrist" and in a major surprise, relatively unknown Austrian actor Christoph Waltz won best actor for his work in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds."

For a complete list of all the Cannes Film Festival winners check out the coverage on Indiewire.

Gregory Ellwood
Editor-in-Chief, Co-Founder

With over a decade of experience in the movie industry, Ellwood survived working for two major studios and has written for Variety, MSN and the LA Times. A co-founder of HitFix, Ellwood spends his time relaxing hitting 3’s on the basketball court and following his beloved Clippers.