Julia
Ducournau,
the
37-year-old
French
director
of
Titane,
a
freaky
and
provocative
body-horror
drama
has
become
the
first
female
director
in
28
years
to
win
the
Cannes
Film
Festival’s
Palme
d'Or.
The
awards
of
the
74th
Cannes
Film
Festival
were
decided
by
a
jury
chaired
by
Spike
Lee
and
handed
out
at
the
event’s
closing
ceremony
in
the
Grand
Theatre
Lumiere
on
Saturday.
For
the
first
time
in
history,
women
outnumbered
men
five
to
four
in
the
Cannes
Film
Festival’s
main
international
competition
jury.
The
women
members
of
the
jury
were
Mati
Diop,
Mylene
Farmer,
Maggie
Gyllenhaal,
Jessica
Hausner
and
Melanie
Laurent.
Kleber
Mendonca
Filho,
Tahar
Rahim
and
Song
Kang-ho
served
alongside
the
quintet.
Ducournau
burst
on
the
scene
with
Raw,
which
bowed
in
the
International
Critics’
Week
in
2016.
She
is
only
the
second
female
director
to
ever
win
the
Cannes
top
prize.
New
Zealand’s
Jane
Campion
was
the
first
woman
to
win
the
Palme
d'Or
for
The
Piano
in
1993.
The
Grand
Prix,
regarded
as
the
festival’s
runners-up
prize,
was
shared
by
two
films
–
Iranian
Asghar
Farhadi’s
A
Hero
and
Finnish
director
Juho
Kuosmanen’s
Compartment
No.
6.
Leos
Carax
won
the
Best
Director
Award
for
the
pop-opera
musical
Annette,
the
Marion
Cotillard-Adam
Driver
starrer
with
which
the
festival
kicked
off
on
July
6.
The
Camera
d'Or
for
the
best
first
film
screened
in
Cannes
this
year
went
to
the
coming-of-age
drama
Murina,
a
Directors’
Fortnight
title
directed
by
The
New
York-based
Croatian
filmmaker
Antoneta
Alamat
Kusijanovic.
The
jury
gave
the
Best
Actor
prize
to
Caleb
Landry
Jones
for
his
lead
performance
in
Australian
director
Justin
Kurzel’s
Nitram,
a
disturbing
peep
into
the
mind
of
a
mass
killer.
The
Best
Actress
prize
was
bagged
by
Norwegian
late-bloomer
Renate
Reinsve,
whose
performance
in
Nordic
auteur
Joachim
Trier’s
The
Worst
Persona
in
the
World
had
critics
gushing
over
her.
The
jury
adjudged
Ryusuke
Hamaguchi
and
Takamasa
Oe’s
screenplay
for
the
critics’
favourite
Drive
My
Car,
the
former’s
screen
adaptation
of
a
Haruki
Murakami
short
story
of
the
same
name.
The
Jury
Prize
was
shared
by
Nadav
Lapid’s
Ahed’s
Knee
and
Apichatpong
Weerasethakul’s
Memoria,
by
far
one
of
the
best-reviewed
films
of
the
entire
festival.