Cannes - French director Jacques Audiard's refugee drama Dheepan on Sunday won the Palme d'Or for best film at the Cannes Film Festival.
The film is about a Tamil Tiger called Dheepan who flees Sri Lanka to Thailand, and then makes his way to France, where he lands a job working as a caretaker in the crime-ridden outer suburbs of Paris.
The movie was one of 19 vying for the Palme d'Or, which is one of the most prestigious awards in cinema.
"It is not a documentary about Sri Lanka or social housing," said the 62-year-old Audiard at the premiere in Cannes last week. "The background is like wallpaper."
"The film is a more love story than a thriller," he said, with Dheepan travelling to France with a woman and a young girl he meets in a refugee camp.
They pose as a family in the hope of improving their chances of securing asylum in Europe.
However, Dheepan soon finds he needs the skills he honed as a fighter in war-torn Sri Lanka to protect his new family in the war zone of Paris' tough suburbs.
Dheepan stars Anthonythasan Jesuthasan, who like his character served as a child soldier for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil before fleeing Sri Lanka, first to Thailand and then to France.
Kalieaswari Srinivasan plays the woman who takes on the role of Dheepan's wife.