The Terrence Malick film Tree Of Life debuted at Cannes with mixed reviews last week, getting a hardy ‘booing’ from half the audience. But apparently, such things have no barring on the festivals judges.

Festival jury president Robert DeNiro announced Sunday that the winner of the Palm d’Or (Golden Palm) award was to go to the Brad Pitt drama.

Tree Of Life is a 1950′s family drama which stars Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain. Writer/director Malick was not in Cannes Sunday night to accept his award, so two of the producers did the accepting instead.

Brad Pitt and partner Angelina Jolie also left the festival before it’s close to race back to Hollywood. The Jolie-Pitt clan left Cannes over the weekend to be able to appear at Jolie’s Kung Fu Panda 2 premiere.

Other Cannes winners included Kirsten Dunst for Best Actress for her turn in controversial director Lars Von Trier‘s Melancholia.

Von Trier was banned from the festival after making remarks about Nazis and Hitler at a press conference where he stated that he sympathized with Hitler.

The best actor honor went to French thespian Jean Dujardin for the film The Artist, and the best director prize went to Nicolas Winding Refn, for Drive, which stars Ryan Gosling.