Cannes Film Festival: The only female directors to win the Palme d’Or
It may not have been introduced under its current guise until almost a decade after the annual event was founded in 1946, but ever since being added to the line-up of accolades in 1955, the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or has been regarded as one of the most prestigious prizes in the entire industry.
Taking over from the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film that was handed out annually, the Palme d’Or was briefly swapped out in favour of its predecessor before becoming the most notable gong at Cannes from 1975 up until the present day.
Many of the most lauded filmmakers in history have been named victorious over the years, with previous winners including such heavyweights as Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel, Martin Scorsese, Akira Kurosawa, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, and Ken Loach, but achieving it more than once is a much rarer accomplishment.
There are only ten names to have won the Palm d’Or more than once, with Alf Sjöberg becoming the first to complete a double in 1951, with Ruben Östlund the most recent having snaffled his second statue in 2022. Dating right back to the inaugural ceremony, almost 100 filmmakers have been named as the winners of Cannes’ highest accolade, but only three of them have been women.
Not only that, but it didn’t happen for the first time until the 1990s, a time when Jane Campion made history with The Piano as its first female victor and first New Zealander to claim the honour. The period drama would go on to earn $140million at the box office and earn Academy Award nominations for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, something that definitely can’t be said of the second.
After bursting onto the scene with cannibalistic terror Raw, Julia Ducournau’s psychological mindfuck Titane made her the first woman in 28 years to win the Palm d’Or in 2021, although the phantasmagorical sci-fi journey of self-discovery certainly wasn’t the type of movie that would appeal to the more buttoned-up sensibilities of Hollywood’s voting bodies.
After waiting almost three decades for another female winner, the Palm d’Or ended up with its second in three years after Justine Triet’s Anatomy of the Fall picked up where Titane left off, and it would go on to replicate the trajectory of The Piano by landing Oscar nods for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, with Triet sharing the ‘Best Original Screenplay’ trophy alongside co-writer Arthur Harari.
Despite Cannes having been running for close to 80 years at this point, it took almost half a century for a woman to win the Palm d’Or, and it’s only happened twice more since then. However, there’s reason to hope it’s going to become a much more common occurrence moving forward, if only for the fact it’s happened two out of the last three years, and female directors continue making some of the best films in the business.
