Montreal: Dogme pioneer and Danish director Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark won the Palme d’Or at the 53rd Cannes International Film Festival. The film stars Catherine Deneuve and quirky Euro pop star Bjork and is the first top prize winner to be shot in digital video.

A Denmark/France/Sweden coproduction, Dancer has been acquired for u.s. distribution by Fine Line Features. In Canada, Odeon Films, a unit of Alliance Atlantis Communications, will distribute in English. Film Tonic will distribute in the French-track Quebec market.

Guy Gagnon, president of Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm, says aac’s acquisition market was especially low-key this year, although the company did pick up Harry, ‘a surprising French thriller in the Hitchcock tradition.’

Lions Gate Films acquired North American rights to Ken Loach’s working-class sister drama Bread and Roses, as well as u.s. rights to Patrice Leconte’s $25-million France/Canada historical coproduction La Veuve de Saint-Pierre/The Widow of St. Pierre. Alliance Atlantis will distribute in Canada.

Bravo! station manager Paul Gratton didn’t acquire any product at Cannes. Instead, he screened prebought titles including Arto Paragamian’s Two Thousand and None.

‘It’s rare to find great films ready for acquisition for the North American market, although a few were picked up by Miramax. Certainly Quebec distributors were very active in picking up European films,’ says the Toronto-based broadcaster.

And while Denys Arcand’s Stardom (Alliance Atlantis) was the first Canadian movie ever selected to wrap the festival, all reports from the Cote d’Azur indicate the Canadian profile in 2000 was generally low-key. ‘It wasn’t a great year for Canadian cinema at Cannes, but we were better off than Italy and other countries [Germany, for one],’ says Gratton. ‘It’s cyclical and there’s still a lot to look forward to.’