The 68th Cannes Film Festival ended on Sunday May 24th with Jacques Audiard’s Sri Lankan refugee drama “Dheepan” taking the festival’s coveted top honor, the Palme d’Or.

The film relating the story of three Sri Lankan Refugees surviving as refugees in France has a former LTTE child soldier Anthonythasan Jesuthasan starring in the lead role.Jesuthasan writing under the nm de plume Shoba Sakthi is a well -known writer in Tamil. He lives in Paris.

French director Jacques Audiard (C) poses on stage with French actress and member of the Feature Film jury Sophie Marceau (L), Sri Lankan actress Kalieaswari Srinivasan (2ndL) and Sri Lankan actor Jesuthasan Antonythasan after being awarded with the Palme d’Or from his film “Dheepan” during the closing ceremony of the 68th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southeastern France, on May 24, 2015. AFP PHOTO / ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT-via:facebook.com/pages/Festival-de-Cannes-Page-Officielle/197710070249937

The win for “Dheepan” comes at a time when Europe is particularly attuned to the experience of immigrants, following the recent deaths of hundreds crossing the Mediterranean, seeking Italian shores. Jury members, though, said “Dheepan” was chosen for its overall strength as a film, rather than any topicality.

“We all thought it was a very beautiful movie,” said Ethan Coen, calling the decision “swift.” ”Everyone had some high level of excitement and enthusiasm for it.”

The choice of “Dheepan,” as selected by a jury led by Joel and Ethan Coen, left some critics scratching their heads. While the dapper French filmmaker has drawn widespread acclaim for films such as “A Prophet” and “Rust and Bone,” some critics were disappointed by the thriller climax of Audiard’s film. “Dheepan” is about a trio of Sri Lankans who pretend to be a family in order to flee their war-torn country and are settled in a violent housing project outside Paris.

“This isn’t a jury of film critics,” Joel Coen told reporters after the awards ceremony, alongside fellow jurors like Guillermo del Toro and Jake Gyllenhaal. “This is a jury of artists who are looking at the work.”

Audiard, springing to the podium at the Palais des Festivals, accepted the award with warm gratitude, bowing to the jury. He was joined by the makeshift parents of his film: Kalieaswari Srinivasan and Antonythasan Jesuthasan, who himself was Tamil Tiger child soldier before finding political asylum in France.

“To receive a prize from the Coen brothers is exceptional,” said Audiard, who added that only receiving one from the Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, the Belgian filmmaking siblings, could equal it.

Among the actors in the film are Antonythasen Jesuthasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan, Claudine Vinasithamby, Vincent Rottiers and Marc Zinga

Antonythasan Jesuthasan is a well – known writer in Tamil who uses the pseudonym Shoba Sakthi.
Anthonythasan worked odd jobs until he began writing in the late 1990s, churning out short stories, plays, political essays and, most recently, novels inspired by his traumatic experiences in Sri Lanka.

He took a break from writing to appear in Audiard’s movie, before which his acting had mainly been limited to propaganda street theatre for the Tamil Tigers and later, a bit role in an Indian movie.

“I was already familiar with Jacques’s films” before taking the part of Dheepan, he said.

“When it came to the acting, it was difficult but it was a joy.”

His next book, set in present-day Sri Lanka, is due out in July.

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Jesuthasan Antonythasan, yet another first-timer fronting an In Competition film, is suitably restrained as the titular character. Dheepan’s got a lowly view of his position in society and so spends any time out of the house bundled up, trying to hide in the background. He even lectures his fake wife about getting used to being stared at, rather than thinking they may actually integrate into the society, betraying incredibly modest goals and building to an understated emotional crescendo when he finally does become part of the community.

That family dynamic is an interesting one; outwardly a happy unit, alone moments remind how these people have been just flung together. Former soldier Dheepan and vague acquaintance Yalini naturally have no husband and wife chemistry and Yalini is woefully incapable of treating nine year old Illayaal, who she first met moments before they left, anything like a child. They’re unconventionally disfunction, and it’s working together that proves to be the group’s arc.

A full film dealing with just this would have been more than enough, but, somewhat regrettably, Audiard goes for a literally explosive finale. Having Dheepan’s world almost revert back to the state it was back in Sri Lanka is really the only endgame the film could play, showing how escaping the country doesn’t free asylum seekers of their past and allowing Antonythasan’s performance to go full circle, but it feels tonally off kilter and dampens the film’s overall impact. But, thankfully, not enough to make Dheepan in anyway unworthy as a social exploration or abnormal family drama.

Be aware that this isn’t a film that had some reviewers full attention. The press screening for Gaspar Noé’s Love started less than an hour after Dheepan ended, meaning a good chunk of the critic audience were shifting in their seats during the third act and had left before the credits rolled.

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The Grand Prize, in effect the Palme runner-up, went to the widely praised Hungarian movie “Son of Saul,” a first feature from Laszlo Nemes. Set almost entirely in Auschwitz-Birkenau, it follows a Sonderkommando, one of those Jewish prisoners who were forced to help run the Nazi extermination camps, as he attempts to bury a child and locate a rabbi to recite a funeral prayer.

The Jury Prize went to “The Lobster,” an absurdist comedy from the Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, about a world in which people who remain unmated are turned into animals. The Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-Hsien won best director for “The Assassin,” a glorious martial arts film.

The French actor Lambert Wilson again served as the host for the awards, which took place in the grand Lumière Theater in the festival’s headquarters and this year included dance and musical numbers that gave the ceremony a distinctly Oscar-ized feel. The American filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coen presided over a main competition jury that included the Mexican director Guillermo del Toro and the Malian singer Rokia Traoré.

The Caméra d’Or, for best first feature, went to “La Tierra y la Sombra,” from the Colombian director César Augusto Acevedo; the film was shown in a parallel section and was inexplicably preceded by a performance of “I Ain’t Got Nobody” sung by a tuneless John C. Reilly. Mr. Wilson followed this by singing “Happy Birthday” to Mr. Reilly. After another musical number, the trailblazing French filmmaker Agnès Varda, who will turn 87 on Saturday and whose films include classics like “Cléo From 5 to 7,” received a much-deserved honorary Palme d’Or

(Compiled from reports and reviews in newspapers and web sites)