Sant said the movie criticized "the urge to conform in a bland way, forgetting diversity, which is encouraged at Cannes"

CANNES, France, May 26 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – An American documentary-style movie about a school massacre that strongly resembled the real-life 1999 Columbine high school shootings, won Cannes movie festival Palme d'Or Sunday, May 25.

"Elephant", by U.S. director Gus Van Sant, elbowed past 19 other contenders, including "Dogville", the latest production by Cannes' favorite son, the Danish director Lars von Trier, which almost all critics had expected to win, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"To win is kind of miraculous and fortunate and lucky," winning Van Sant told a media conference after receiving the awards.

He was the first American to win the prestigious Palme d'Or  since Quentin Tarantino took it for "Pulp Fiction" in 1994.

His film was made for a U.S. cable network on a meager three-million-dollar (2.5 million euro) budget with a mostly non-professional cast of real students in a school in the American west

Van Sant rejected any suggestion that his movie was anti-American, reported the BBC News Online.

"I live in America, it's made from the viewpoint of my own life in America," he said, admitting the film criticized certain things, including "the urge to conform in a bland way, forgetting diversity, which is encouraged at Cannes".

The title came from a highly acclaimed 1989 BBC documentary about Northern Ireland.

Van Sant, who is best-known for Oscar-winning "Good Will Hunting", "Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho", also picked up the Best Director prize, an unusual double honor from the nine-person Cannes jury that this year included U.S. director Steven Soderbergh and actress Meg Ryan.

Sant (2nd R) poses with three actors in his 'Elephant' film

Diversity is one of Cannes' signature themes, however, and that was reinforced with the award of the runner-up Grand Prize to "Distant", a Turkish film by Nuri Bilge Ceylan that explores the emptiness of life and loneliness in the city.

His two male leads, Muzaffer Ozdemir and the late Mehmet Emin Toprak, shared the Best Actor prize, though neither was there to pick it up.

Toprak died in a car accident the day after learning that the film had been picked to screen at Cannes.

A French-language Canadian film, "The Barbarian Invasions", that was probably the most popular entry seen in the week and a half long festival, earned a Best Screenplay award for its writer and director, Denys Arcand.

It also took the Best Actress prize for Marie-Josee Croze, who played a heroin junky helping a dying man cope with his pain.

Overlooked was the Clint Eastwood-directed "Mystic River", a psychological thriller that used its all-star cast of Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins to good effect.

Apart from those films, reviewers classed many of the films competing as sub-par, and the atmosphere of the festival overall as "morose".

The diving U.S. dollar pared back the normally lavish party scene, and the fear of the SARS virus gutted Asian attendance at the bustling behind-the-scenes market forum, where movie deals are made.

For many of the 30,000 industry types and journalists accredited to the event, and for the tens of thousands more movie fans who flocked to the Riviera for a glimpse of celebrities, the real high point came early on, with the out-of-competition premiere of "The Matrix Reloaded" in the presence of Keanu Reeves and its other stars.

Little else lived up to Cannes' reputation for over-the-top cinematic hype except for Arnold Schwarzenegger's shameless plugging of his upcoming and as-yet unseen "Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines" in a seaside publicity show and exclusive party.