Cannes (France): Julia Ducournau took the top award at the Cannes Film Festival Saturday (17 JULY 2021) - winning the Palme d'Or for Titane. Spike Lee announced the victory at the beginning of the ceremony by mistake, but Ducournau said it didn't color the win.
"It was so weird that I do not believe it in the end, I was like, I must have misheard me. Or I mean, maybe he misread. I didn't want to believe it. So I was exactly the same tension as if he hadn't said it at all," said Ducournau.
She is only the second female director to win the award after Jayne Campion won in 1993 for The Piano. "It's too long. It feels ridiculous when you think of it. It feels utterly ridiculous," she added. "But I'm sure that things are moving forward. I have this feeling. I mean, that's how I felt when I received it."
READ | Cannes 2021 winners list: Titane wins top Cannes honor, 2nd ever for female director
The win on Saturday was mistakenly announced by jury president Lee at the top of the closing ceremony, broadcast in France on Canal+, unleashing a few moments of confusion. Ducournau didn’t come to the stage to accept the award until the formal announcement at the end of the ceremony. But the early hint didn’t diminish from her emotional response.
Cannes 2021 was the first full-scale film festival to take place since the start of the pandemic. Last year's Cannes event was canceled. The last film to take the Palme d'Or was Bong Joon Ho's Parasite in 2019, which later swept the award circuit and won Best Picture at the 2020 Academy Awards.
