In 1993, Jane Campion became the first director to receive the Palme d’Or for The Piano Lesson. It took 28 years for the Lumière auditorium to see another woman following in her footsteps: Julia Ducournau for the gore and metaller fable Titanium. To discover the third woman, and second French filmmaker, to receive such an honor, two years will fortunately have been enough. With Anatomy of a Fall, Justine Triet enters this still limited pantheon and confirms the slow movement towards equality in a film industry, historically dominated by men.
Justine Triet, who strongly denounced in her speech of thanks the way in which the French government “shockingly denied” the movement against pension reform, reaches the top of the cinema after four films and as many portraits of women.
This new coronation of a young French director also testifies to the success of French productions in international festivals, with the Golden Lion awarded to Audrey Diwan in 2021 in Venice for The Event and the Golden Bear in February to Nicolas Philibert for his documentary On the Adamant.
The jury, chaired by Ruben Östlund and on which Julia Ducournau also sat, chose with Anatomy of a fall which tells the trial of a widow (Sandra Hüller) accused at the assizes of having killed her husband. The opportunity to dissect the power dynamics within an affluent artistic couple and to expose the social prejudices that independent women face.
Anatomy of a Fall was acquired for the United States for the distributor Neon, which acclaimed the South Korean Parasite gold medal at the Oscars. With such support, Justine Triet will have to prepare to participate in the Hollywood awards season and should find on this circuit The Zone Of Interest by Briton Jonathan Glazer on the life of a Nazi commander settling near Auschwitz.
Regularly put on the spot for his lack of parity between director and director in the official competition, the artistic director Thierry Frémaux and his selection committee had for this 76th edition retained the record number of seven directors out of twenty-one contenders for the Palme d’Or.
Justine Triet is not the only director to do well in this 2023 vintage. Briton Molly Manning Walker received the Un Certain Regard prize for How To Have Sex, and two other filmmakers share the Golden Eye for the best documentary, Kadib Abyad (The mother of all lies) and Kaouther Ben Hania (The girls of Olfa, on the radicalization of Tunisian teenagers).