Laurent Cantet's The Class not only won the jury's Palme d'Or in Cannes, it also is the top-rated film from Screen International's Cannes critics jury. It scored an average of 3.3 out of a possible 4.0, making it the most popular of the 22 films in Competition.

This year's jury votes were more polarised than ever, for example Clint Eastwood's The Exchange saw several 1 votes as well as several 4 votes.

Other films faring well was Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys (2.8) and 24 City, Lorna's Silence, Waltz With Bashirand The Exchange - each averaging 2.7.

The jury was comprised of 10 international critics: Jose Carlos Avellar from escreVerciema.com in Brazil, Michel Ciment from Positif in France, Alberto Crespi from L'Unita in Italy, Howard Feinstein from Filmmaker magazine in the US, Leonardo Garcia-Tsao from La Jornada in Mexico, Bo Green Jensen from Weekendavisen Berlingske in Denmark, Dohoon Kim from Cine21 in South Korea, Derek Malcolm from the Evening Standard in the UK, Jan Schulz-Ojala from Der Tagesspiegel in Germany, and David Stratton from The Australian in Australia. The 11th vote came from Screen International's individual critic for each film.

The lowest-rated film was Brillante Mendoza's Serbis with an average of 0.7. Other poor scoreres were The Palermo Shooting (1.2), Frontier Of Dawn (1.2), Blindness (1.3), My Magic (1.5) and Two Lovers (1.7).

This year's average score per film was 2.17, nearly the same average (2.2) Competition score as with our juries in 2007, 2006 and 2005.

Last year, the joint winners of our jury poll were Palme d'Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days and No Country For Old Men.

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