French director Agnes Jaoui's The Taste Of Other (Le Gout Des Autres) and Australian Paul Cox's Innocence shared the top prize at the 24th Montreal World Film Festival which wrapped on Monday.

The Grand Prix of the Americas is the second major prize for the Cox title after Taormina. Iranian auteur Bahman Farmanara was awarded a special Grand Prix by the jury for Smell Of Camphor, Fragrance Of Jasmine. The FIPRESCI prize went to Raoul Ruiz's Chile-Portugal-France co-production Combat D'Amour En Songe while the audience award went to local hero Denis Villeneuve's Maelstrom, which opens the Perspective Canada programme at Toronto on September 8.

Silvio Caiozzi won the best direction award for the Chilean production Coronation while Gong Li and Isabelle Huppert shared the actress prize. Li, whom the festival feted with a tribute, won for her role in Sun Zhou's Breaking The Silence. Huppert appears in Claude Chabrol's Nightcap. Mark Ruffalo, star of the Sundance hit You Can Count On Me, earned best actor kudos. The screenplay prize went to Pupi Avati and his brother and collaborator Antonio Avati for La Via Degli Angeli. Best first film was Iranian debutante Mariam Shariar's Daughter Of The Sun.