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French director Justine Triet became the third female director to win the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or on Saturday, beating out 20 other films in competition for the top prize.
Triet called being only the third woman to win “surprising” and said the decision was encouraging for the future.
“We’re at the dawn of deep-seated changes in this respect,” she said after winning.
Triet used her award speech to criticize how the protest against pension reforms in France “has been denied and repressed in a shocking way” and said more space needed to be made for young filmmakers to be able to make mistakes and start over.
Triet, who had previously been nominated for “Sibyl” in 2019, won the prize over veteran directors like Hirokazu Kore-eda, Ken Loach and Wim Wenders, all of whom have at least one Palme d’Or under their belts.
She joins New Zealand’s Jane Campion and France’s Julia Ducournau as only the third woman to have won the competition that this year included a record seven female directors.
Jane Fonda, who introduced the award, said that one day it would be normal for women to win, not historic.
