For all you film fans who think this spring has been particularly dismal in the local movie houses, there are some interesting titles coming out of the Cannes Film Festival — assuming they get distribution here in the U.S.

From Manohla Dargis:

On Sunday evening the 63rd Cannes Film Festival came to a shocking, exhilarating close with the Palme d’Or going to “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” from the Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. …a fantastical tale about a dying man whose past lives — and ghostly relatives…

The Grand Prix, effectively second place, went to Xavier Beauvois’s “Of Gods and Men,” a quiet, touching French drama, loosely based on actual events, about Cistercian monks imperiled by Muslim fundamentalists as civil war begins sweeping across Algeria in the 1990s.

The Jury Prize went to “A Screaming Man,” another film set against civil war, this one directed by the Chadian-born director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun.

Best screenplay went to the South Korean Lee Chang-dong for “Poetry,” a beautifully directed, emotionally wrenching drama about a grandmother who discovers that her only grandson has been party to a horrific crime.

best actress prize, however, seemed destined for Juliette Binoche, the star of Abbas Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy.” This is Mr. Kiarostami’s first though probably not last film made outside Iran.

Others mentioned in the article