CANNES 2021

Julia Ducournau's 'Titane' Wins Palme d'Or Top Prize at Cannes 2021

by Alex Billington
July 18, 2021
Source: Cannes

Victory for Titane!! Winners of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival awards, including the coveted Palme d'Or, were revealed at a glamorous ceremony in Cannes, France this weekend. The big winner this year is all out punk French film Titane, directed by filmmaker Julia Ducournau, her second feature film after breaking into the scene with Raw a few years ago. She is the second female filmmaker to EVER win the Palme d'or in the festivals 74 year history, and the first female director to ever win entirely on her own. (Jane Campion won the Palme d'Or in 1993 for The Piano, but that was a tie win with Farewell My Concubine that year.) Every other excellent film seemed to pick up an award, all the winners were expected picks. Including the Best Actress choice - Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve in one of my favorites of the fest, a love story film called The Worst Person in the World (read my review). All the major Cannes 2021 winners are listed below.

Here's the full list of Cannes 2021 winners, with most of the key awards listed below, including Un Certain Regard. I'll get into my own commentary after the winners. Visit the official Cannes website for more info.

Palme d'Or (Golden Palm):
Titane directed by Julia Ducournau

Grand Prix (Runner Up):
A Hero (Ghahreman) directed by Asghar Farhadi
(tied with) Compartment No. 6 (Hytti Nro 6) directed by Juho Kuosmanen

Jury Prize:
Memoria directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
(tied with) Ahed's Knee (Ha'berech) directed by Nadav Lapid

Best Director:
Leos Carax for Annette

Best Screenplay:
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi & Takamasa Oe for Drive My Car (Doraibu Mai Kâ)

Camera d'Or (First-Time Filmmaker):
Murina directed by Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic

Best Performance by an Actress:
Renate Reinsve in Joachim Trier's The Worst Person in the World (Verdens Verste Menneske)

Best Performance by an Actor:
Caleb Landry Jones in Justin Kurzel's Nitram

Un Certain Regard

Un Certain Regard Prize:
Unclenching the Fists (Razzhimaya Kulaki) directed by Kira Kovalenko

Jury Prize:
Great Freedom (Grosse Freiheit) directed by Sebastian Meise

Ensemble Prize:
Good Mother (Bonne Mère) directed by Hafsia Herzi

Courage Prize:
La Civil directed by Teodora Ana Mihai

Prize of Originality:
Lamb directed by Valdimar Jóhannsson

Special Jury Mention:
Prayers for the Stolen (Noche de Fuego) directed by Tatiana Huezo

That's the full winners list for Cannes this year. Congrats to all of the 2021 festival winners! I am SO happy for Titane! What a glorious win! I loved it! What a wild and crazy film, a mad genius creation of a mad genius filmmaker. She deserves this. I had a feeling Spike Lee would dig this one, and it's easily the most original and outrageous and awesome film of the festival. So even though it's a bit more edgy than expect for a Cannes Palme d'Or, it's also the perfect film to win this year. I'm also satisfied with everything else they've chosen - I love A Hero (read my review) and all of the other major winners were some of the best films of the festival, and every other critic I know was talking about them all festival long. I'm even quite happy for the Sparks Brothers musical Annette, which was the Opening Night film but it stuck with me through the entire festival. It's an experience unlike any! Keep an eye out for all these films coming to your local cinema.

The main 2021 jury was lead by filmmaker Spike Lee, plus: Mati Diop, Mylène Farmer, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jessica Hausner, Mélanie Laurent, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Tahar Rahim and Song Kang-ho. This brings us to the end of our 2021 coverage, another year at the Cannes Film Festival wraps up with the festival awards.

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