Winners at the 2017 Cannes film festival

CANNES, France: Here are the winners from the 2017 Cannes film festival, as chosen Sunday by a star-studded jury led by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar.

Palme d´Or: ´The Square´
Swedish film "The Square", a dark satire of the contemporary art world, was the surprise winner of the top Palme d´Or prize at the world´s biggest film festival.
The film, a savagely funny takedown of political correctness and the things we choose to hang in art galleries, had premiered to strong reviews -- but even director Ruben Ostlund was shocked as he picked up the award, shouting, "Oh my God, oh my God!"

Grand Prix: ´120 Beats Per Minute´
"120 Beats Per Minute", a moving drama set in Paris at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1990s, scooped second prize for its wrenching portrayal of a romance between two activists in the advocacy group ACT UP.
The film was a deeply personal project for director Robin Campillo, who was himself an activist in the French branch of the group that helped shame the world into action.

Jury Prize: ´Loveless´
"Loveless", a bleak tale of a middle-class couple in Moscow looking to offload their child as they go through a bitter divorce, came in third.
The film by Kremlin critic Andrei Zvyagintsev offers a stinging critique of modern Russian society, depicting a country obsessed with consumerism and its smartphones.

Best actor: Joaquin Phoenix
Triple Oscar nominee Joaquin Phoenix won best actor for playing a traumatised hitman in Lynne Ramsay´s ultra-violent "You Were Never Really Here".
He gives an electrifying performance as Joe, a former soldier who is hired by a New York state senator to rescue his daughter from a paedophile ring.

Best actress: Diane Kruger
In her first film role in her native German, Hollywood star and former model Diane Kruger swapped her usually glamorous image to play a mother who vows revenge after her ethnic Kurdish husband and son are killed in a neo-Nazi attack.
Hailed as a "powerhouse performance" by Variety magazine, Kruger said the role had taken a huge emotional toll. "The film almost killed me," she said at Cannes. "I haven´t worked since."

Best director: Sofia Coppola
Sofia Coppola picked up best director for her remake of the American Civil War thriller "The Beguiled", starring Colin Farrell as a soldier who bewitches several Southern women including Nicole Kidman.
Collecting her award, the "Bling Ring" director thanked her father -- "Apocalypse Now" director Francis Ford Coppola -- for teaching her the tricks of the trade.

Best screenplay: Lynne Ramsay and Yorgos Lanthimos
The nine-member jury opted to split the screenplay prize in two, dividing it between Scottish director Lynne Ramsay for "You Were Never Really Here" and Greece´s Yorgos Lanthimos for "The Killing of a Sacred Deer", a chilling suburban thriller starring Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman.

Special prize: ´Nicole Kidman´
Nicole Kidman was the undisputed queen of this year´s Cannes with four projects showing. To mark its 70th birthday, the festival rewarded her with a special prize.