Veteran English director Ken Loach shocked the 59th Cannes Film Festival by winning the Palme d'Or for best film.

He did the deed with his openly anti-British, pro-Irish history lesson, The Wind That Shakes The Barley. The sombre, methodical film starring Cillian Murphy traces the modern roots of the Irish Republican Army in 1920, chronicling a brother-against-brother tragedy when the partition of Ireland sets off a fresh wave of violence.

Meanwhile, major names such as Sofia Coppola with Marie Antoinette and Mexican Guillermo del Toro with Pan's Labyrinth were left with nothing. Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code, which so controversially kicked off Cannes on opening night, was not eligible for awards because it played out-of-competition.

The highest profile award in the Palmares went to Penelope Cruz as best actress for her stunning, career-best performance in Volver, but the jury was feeling generous and decided she should share it with her five female co-stars -- a twist that absolutely thrilled Cruz. "It is so much more beautiful to share it than to have it all alone," Cruz said backstage. "We became a little family," she said of working with Carmen Maura, Lola Duenas, Blanca Portillo, Yohana Cobo and Chus Lampreave.

The best actor prize was also shared, in this case by the five Arab actors who star as Algerian soldiers heroically fighting for France in World War II but being treated like second-class citizens. The five -- Jamel Debbouze, Samy Naceri, Roschdy Zem, Sami Bouajila and Bernard Blancan -- are featured in French director Rachid Bouchareb's Indigenes. They sang a pro-African, anti-French colonial song as part of their energetic thank-you speech.

The Palme d'Or for Loach, his first in a 35-year career, literally came out of left field. That applies both to Loach's politics -- he used the podium to lash out at the sorry past of the British Empire and equated it with Britain's current participation in the Iraq War -- and because The Wind That Shakes The Barley barely shook up anyone when it debuted at the beginning of Cannes competition.

Except the nine-member jury under Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai: Wong and other jury members, including English stars Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Roth and star Samuel L. Jackson, said the Loach film shook all of them to their roots.

Source: Jam!

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