AN HONEST and melancholic Turkish tale carried off the prestigious Golden Palm at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. 

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep (below) is an observation of contemporary Turkish society, with reflections on it that could resonate elsewhere to. 

At well over three hours, it’s a lengthy film but worth persevering with for the delightful and surprising story of Aydin.

He’s a wealthy landowner and former actor who runs an exclusive hotel in the ancient caves of Anatolia. He lives a reclusive life with his much younger spouse and divorced sister and, as snow falls and a domestic crisis evolves, Bilge’s theme of the timeless cynicism of the rich towards the poor unfolds. Wholly engrossing.

The Wonders (right) was the most enjoyable film in the festival and was rewarded with the grand prix — traditionally, the silver medal at Cannes. 

A tender film by Italian young filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher, it’s a coming-of-age story seen through the eyes of a 13-year-old girl who lives in farm in the Umbria countryside with her beekeeping parents and sisters. Bucolic bliss. 

Timothy Spall drew loud cheers when he won the best actor for Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner (above) the biopic of painter JMW Turner. His performance, combining humour and humanity, is absolutely astounding. 

Julianne Moore’s award as best actress for Map To The Stars by David Cronenberg, a Hollywood satire depicting the dysfunctional nature of US society, was also a popular choice.

The jury prize was shared between 83-year-old Jean-Luc Godard, whose 3D film essay Goodbye To Language is another provocative and uncompromising masterpiece, and the 25-year-old Xavier Dolan for his touching and inventive film Mommy, in which a mother struggles to raise a troubled son with attention deficit disorder. 

Best script went to Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan, a mighty Russian tragedy with a multitude of characters, in which the owner of a small-town car shop comes into conflict with a local mayor who will stop at nothing to take possession of the man’s property and land. 

In my view best director at the festival by a mile was Ken Loach. Yet he won nothing for Jimmy’s Hall, a drama about political activist Jimmy Gralton, deported from Ireland during the “red scare” of the 1930s. 

Completely ignored too was the Dardenne brothers’ Two Days, One Night, a politically committed workplace drama, in which a woman facing redundancy has to persuade her workmates to forego their bonuses in order to keep her job. 

The only other real contender for the Palme d’Or in my opinion was Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu, a blood-curdling and politically charged film inspired by the 2012 Islamist stoning in Mali of a young unmarried couple with two children for the “crime” of not being married before God. Terrifying. 

While perhaps this year’s winners are not a stunningly adventurous or groundbreaking list, there was undoubted quality on show and plenty of evidence of directors wishing to raise social issues and tell some fascinating stories with compassion and imagination along the way.