Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director

Best Director Award
Prix de la mise en scène  (French)
The 2021 recipient: Leos Carax
Country	France
Presented by	Cannes Film Festival
First awarded	1946
Currently held by	Leos Carax Annette (2021)
Official website	www.festival-cannes.com/en/

The Best Director Award (French: Prix de la mise en scène) is an annual award presented at the Cannes Film Festival for best directing achievements in a feature film screened as part of festival's official selection and chosen by the jury from the films in official competition slate. As of the 2021 festival, Leos Carax is the most recent winner in this category for his work on Annette.

History

The award was first presented in 1946. The prize was not awarded on 12 occasions (1947, 1953–54, 1960, 1962–64, 1971, 1973–74, 1977, 1980). Additionally, the festival was not held at all in 1948, 1950 and 2020; while in 1968 no awards were given as the festival was called off mid-way due to the May 1968 events in France. Also, the jury vote was tied and prize was shared by two directors on seven occasions (1955, 1969, 1975, 1983, 2001, 2002, and 2016). Joel Coen of the Coen brothers has received the most awards in this category with three. One directing team have shared the award; Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne for Young Ahmed in 2019. Yuliya Solntseva was the first woman to have won the award, for 1961's Chronicle of Flaming Years.

The winner of Best Director Award rarely wins the Palme d'Or, the main prize at the festival that also awarded to the director of the winning film. This happened only twice, in 1991, when Joel Coen won both awards for Barton Fink; and in 2003, when Gus Van Sant winning for his film Elephant.

Winners

Table key

	Indicates Ex-aequo winners

Year	Director(s)	Film	Original title
1940s
1946	René Clément	The Battle of the Rails	La Bataille du rail
1947	No award given that year
1948	Festival not held, no awards given that year
1949	René Clément	The Walls of Malapaga	Au-delà des grilles
1950s
1950	Festival not held, no awards given that year
1951	Luis Buñuel	Los Olvidados
1952	Christian Jaque	Fanfan la Tulipe
1953	No award given that year
1954	No award given that year
1955	Jules Dassin	Rififi	Du rififi chez les hommes
	Sergei Vasilyev	Heroes of Shipka	Герои Шипки
1956	Sergei Yutkevich	Othello	Отелло
1957	Robert Bresson	A Man Escaped or: The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth	Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut
1958	Ingmar Bergman	Brink of Life	Nära livet
1959	François Truffaut	The 400 Blows	Les Quatre Cents Coups
1960s
1960	No award given that year
1961	Yuliya Solntseva	Chronicle of Flaming Years	Повесть пламенных лет
1962	No award given that year
1963	No award given that year
1964	No award given that year
1965	Liviu Ciulei	Forest of the Hanged	Pădurea spânzuraților
1966	Sergei Yutkevich	Lenin in Poland	Ленин в Польше
1967	Ferenc Kósa	Ten Thousand Days	Tízezer nap
1968	Festival interrupted, no awards given that year because of the May 1968 events in France
1969	Glauber Rocha	Antonio das Mortes	O Dragão da Maldade contra o Santo Guerreiro
	Vojtěch Jasný	All My Compatriots	Všichni dobří rodáci
1970s
1970	John Boorman	Leo the Last
1971	No award given that year
1972	Miklós Jancsó	Red Psalm	Még kér a nép
1973	No award given that year
1974	No award given that year
1975	Michel Brault	Orders	Les Ordres
	Costa-Gavras	Special Section	Section spéciale
1976	Ettore Scola	Down and Dirty	Brutti, sporchi e cattivi
1977	No award given that year
1978	Nagisa Ōshima	Empire of Passion	愛の亡霊
1979	Terrence Malick	Days of Heaven
1980s
1980	No award given that year
1981	No award given that year
1982	Werner Herzog	Fitzcarraldo
1983	Robert Bresson	L'Argent
	Andrei Tarkovsky	Nostalghia
1984	Bertrand Tavernier	A Sunday in the Country	Un dimanche à la campagne
1985	André Téchiné	Rendez-vous
1986	Martin Scorsese	After Hours
1987	Wim Wenders	Wings of Desire	Der Himmel über Berlin
1988	Fernando Solanas	Sur
1989	Emir Kusturica	Time of the Gypsies	Дом за вешање
1990s
1990	Pavel Lungin	Taxi Blues	Такси-блюз
1991	Joel Coen	Barton Fink
1992	Robert Altman	The Player
1993	Mike Leigh	Naked
1994	Nanni Moretti	Caro diario
1995	Mathieu Kassovitz	La Haine
1996	Joel Coen	Fargo
1997	Wong Kar-wai	Happy Together	春光乍洩
1998	John Boorman	The General
1999	Pedro Almodóvar	All About My Mother	Todo sobre mi madre
2000s
2000	Edward Yang	Yi Yi	一 一
2001	Joel Coen	The Man Who Wasn't There
	David Lynch	Mulholland Drive
2002	Paul Thomas Anderson	Punch-Drunk Love
	Im Kwon-taek	Chi-hwa-seon	취화선
2003	Gus Van Sant	Elephant
2004	Tony Gatlif	Exils
2005	Michael Haneke	Caché
2006	Alejandro González Iñárritu	Babel
2007	Julian Schnabel	The Diving Bell and the Butterfly	Le Scaphandre et le Papillon
2008	Nuri Bilge Ceylan	Three Monkeys	Üç Maymun
2009	Brillante Mendoza	Kinatay
2010s
2010	Mathieu Amalric	On Tour	Tournée
2011	Nicolas Winding Refn	Drive
2012	Carlos Reygadas	Post Tenebras Lux
2013	Amat Escalante	Heli
2014	Bennett Miller	Foxcatcher
2015	Hou Hsiao-hsien	The Assassin	刺客聶隱娘
2016	Olivier Assayas	Personal Shopper
	Cristian Mungiu	Graduation	Bacalaureat
2017	Sofia Coppola	The Beguiled
2018	Paweł Pawlikowski	Cold War	Zimna wojna
2019	Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne	Young Ahmed	Le Jeune Ahmed
2020s
2020	Festival not held, no awards given that year due to the COVID-19 pandemic
2021	Leos Carax	Annette

Multiple winners

The following individuals received two or more Best Director awards:

Wins	Director	Nationality
3	Joel Coen	United States
2	John Boorman	England
	Robert Bresson	France
	René Clément	France
	Sergei Yutkevich	Soviet Union

See also

• Silver Bear for Best Director
• Silver Lion

External links

• Official website
• Cannes Film Festival at the Internet Movie Database
• Top 25 Movies That Won Best Director At Cannes - Taste of Cinema