Roman Polanski 's 'The Pianist' Wins Palme D'Or at Cannes Film Festival

French director Roman Polanski poses with his Palme d'Or for the film "The Pianist" after the award ceremony of the 55th Film Festival in Cannes, on the French Riviera, Sunday, May 26, 2002.

"The Pianist," Roman Polanski's highly personal film about a musician who survives the Holocaust, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday.

The film stars Adrien Brody as a brilliant Polish pianist who manages to escape the Warsaw ghetto and is finally saved by a German officer. As boy in Poland, Polanski himself survived the Krakow ghetto but lost his mother at Auschwitz.

In a year of especially high-quality films, second place, or the grand prize, went to "The Man Without a Past" by Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki, a whimsical tale of an amnesia victim who rediscovers life and love in the slums of Helsinki.

Polanski, 68, was born in France but moved to Poland with his parents two years before the outbreak of World War II. He says he always knew he would return to Poland to make a Holocaust film, but was waiting for the right story. He found it in the memoirs of pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman.

Although the film was not his own story, Polanski says he used a host of personal memories to fill in the blanks, for everything from the size of ghetto crowds to the way Nazi troops walked and what they wore.

"I'm honored and moved to accept this prize for a film that represents Poland," Polanski said, as his star, Brody, wiped away tears in the audience.

Best director went to American director Paul Thomas Anderson for his darkly comic "Punch-Drunk Love," starring Adam Sandler and Emily Watson, and also to Im Kwon-taek, the South Korean director of "Chihwaseon," a beautifully filmed look at the life of a 19th-century Korean painter.

Best actor went to Belgium's Olivier Gourmet of "The Son" by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Gourmet played a man who refuses to take a boy into his carpentry workshop, then becomes obsessed with him and follows him through the streets.

Best actress went to Finland's Kati Outinen, who played the Salvation Army worker who falls in love with the amnesia victim in Kaurismaki's "The Man Without a Past."

The jury prize, another special honor, went to "Divine Intervention" by Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, a film that took the risk of using humor to depict the tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.