Biography
Her films will fall under the body horror genre if it can be thus designated. Born in Paris, she attended La Femis to study screenwriting and her very first film Junior won the Small Golden Rail at Cannes in 2011. French film director Julia Ducournau’s films are categorized as “Gothic Horror Heroinism”, illustrated by the “graphic body horror” that all of her works show.
Julia made her feature film debut in 2016 with Raw. The film won the Sutherland Award for Best First Feature at the London Film Festival and was described by the critics as the “best horror movie of the decade” She says the way in which her parents, both of them doctors, spoke about the human body growing up informed her artistic expression. And this does not go without consequences: at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival two audience members reportedly fainted and were taken to the hospital.
Nevertheless, Julia remains assured in her representations of humanity through her filmmaking. As written by The Independent, “Raw centres on the question of what it means to be human”. Her inspiration comes from authors who build their work on monstrosities like David Lynch, Cronenberg, Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe.
At the 2021 Cannes Film Festival she won the Golden Palm for her film Titane, which made her the second female director to win the award, as well as the first to win the award solo. She was also nominated for Best Director at the 75th British Academy Film Awards.
In order to create the mythology of the film, if you wish, I have to somehow play with bigger-than-life characters and storylines that somehow echo something deep in us. That’s the thing with foundational texts. They’re epics. But, at the same time, they really say something that echo something deep in our humanity even though most of these stories are actually incredibly gruesome and dark.
At the 2021 Cannes Film Festival she won the Golden Palm for her film Titane, which made her the second female director to win the award, as well as the first to win the award solo. She was also nominated for Best Director at the 75th British Academy Film Awards.
In order to create the mythology of the film, if you wish, I have to somehow play with bigger-than-life characters and storylines that somehow echo something deep in us. That’s the thing with foundational texts. They’re epics. But, at the same time, they really say something that echo something deep in our humanity even though most of these stories are actually incredibly gruesome and dark.