The Most Legendary Palme d'Or Winners
The Palme d'Or (English: Golden Palm) is
the highest prize awarded to the director of the Best Feature Film of the
Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced
in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954,
the festival's highest prize was the Grand Prix du Festival
International du Film. In 1964, the Palme d'Or was replaced again by the
Grand Prix before being reintroduced in 1975. Today, the Palme d'Or is widely
considered one of the film industry's most prestigious awards.
In this post, we look at some of the most legendary
Palme d'Or winners—filmmakers who joined the ultra‑exclusive club of
directors to have won Cannes’ top prize twice.
1. Alf Sjöberg
Sven Erik Alf Sjöberg (21 June 1903 – 17 April 1980) was a
Swedish theatre and film director. Despite his success with films, Sjöberg was
foremost a stage director, perhaps the greatest at the Royal Dramatic Theatre
(alongside first Olof Molander and later Ingmar Bergman).
He was a First Director of Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theatre
between 1930 and 1980; he staged there many remarkable and historic
productions. Sjöberg was also a pioneer director of drama for early Swedish TV
(his 1955 TV production of Hamlet is a national milestone).
At the 3rd Guldbagge Awards, Sjöberg won the award for Best
Director for the film Ön. Sjöberg died in a car accident on his way
to rehearsal at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm.
He won the Grand Prix du Festival at the
Cannes Film Festival twice: in 1946 for Torment (Swedish: Hets)
(part of an eleven‑way tie) and in 1951 for his film Miss Julie (Swedish: Fröken
Julie), an adaptation of August Strindberg's play, which tied with Vittorio
De Sica's Miracle in Milan.
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2. Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola (born 7 April 1939) is an American
filmmaker. He is considered one of the leading figures of the New Hollywood and
one of the greatest directors of all time.
Coppola is the recipient of five Academy Awards, six Golden
Globe Awards, two Palmes d'Or and a BAFTA Award. He directed The
Godfather Part II (1974), which also won Best Picture and earned
Coppola Best Director.
In 1974, Coppola released the thriller The
Conversation, which received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes
Film Festival (then still officially the Grand Prix). His next film, the
Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now (1979), had a notoriously
lengthy and strenuous production and also won the Palme d'Or, making Coppola
one of only a small group of filmmakers to have won the award twice.
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3. Bille August
Bille August (born 9 November 1948) is a Danish director,
screenwriter and cinematographer of film and television.
He has received five Robert Awards (including Best Film and
Best Director) and three Bodil Awards for Best Danish Film. He is also a Knight
of the Order of the Dannebrog.
August's 1987 film Pelle the Conqueror won
the Palme d'Or, the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award. He is
one of only a handful of directors to win the Palme d'Or twice, winning the
award again in 1992 for The Best Intentions, based on the
autobiographical script by Ingmar Bergman.
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4. Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica (born 24 November 1954) is a Serbian film
director, screenwriter, actor, film producer and musician. Kusturica has been
an active filmmaker since the 1980s.
Kusturica has won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival
for Arizona Dream, a Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival
for Black Cat, White Cat and a Silver Lion for Best First Work
for Do You Remember Dolly Bell?.
He has competed at the Cannes Film Festival on five
occasions and won the Palme d'Or twice (for When
Father Was Away on Business and Underground), as well as
the Best Director prize for Time of the Gypsies.
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5. Shōhei Imamura
Shōhei Imamura (15 September 1926 – 30 May 2006) was a
Japanese film director. His main interest as a filmmaker lay in the depiction
of the lower strata of Japanese society.
A key figure in the Japanese New Wave who continued working
into the 21st century, Imamura is the only director from Japan to win two Palme
d'Or awards. Imamura returned to fiction with the 1979 Vengeance Is
Mine, based on the true story of serial killer Akira Nishiguchi.
Two large‑scale remakes followed: Eijanaika (1981),
a re‑imagining of Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate, and The
Ballad of Narayama (1983), a re‑telling of Keisuke Kinoshita's
1958 The Ballad of Narayama. For that film, Imamura received his
first Palme d'Or at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival. The Eel (1997)
again secured Imamura a Palme d'Or, this time shared with Abbas
Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry.
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6. Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne
Brothers Jean‑Pierre Dardenne (born 21 April 1951) and Luc
Dardenne (born 10 March 1954), collectively referred to as the Dardenne
brothers, are a Belgian filmmaking duo. They write, produce and direct
their films together and also own the production company Les Films du Fleuve.
They came to international attention in the mid‑1990s
with La Promesse (The Promise). They won their first
major international film prize when Rosetta won the Palme
d'Or at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival; their work tends to reflect
left‑wing themes and points‑of‑view.
In 2005, they won the Palme d'Or a second time for their
film L'Enfant (The Child), putting them in an elite
club of two‑time winners. Their film Le Silence de Lorna (Lorna's
Silence) won Best Screenplay at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and was
released in Europe in the fall.
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7. Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke (born 23 March 1942) is an Austrian film
director and screenwriter. His work often examines social issues and depicts
the feelings of estrangement experienced by individuals in modern society.
Haneke has made films in French, German and English and has worked in
television and theatre; he also teaches film direction at the Film Academy
Vienna.
He went on to win the Cannes Film Festival's Grand Prix
for The Piano Teacher (2001) as well as its Palme d'Or twice,
for The White Ribbon (2009) and Amour (2012). Amour received
five Academy Award nominations and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign
Language Film.
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8. Ken Loach
Kenneth Charles Loach (born 17 June 1936) is an English
filmmaker. His socially critical directing style and socialist views are
evident in his film treatment of social issues such as poverty (Poor Cow,
1967), homelessness (Cathy Come Home, 1966) and labour rights (Riff‑Raff,
1991, and The Navigators, 2001).
Loach's film Kes (1969) was voted one of
the greatest British films of the 20th century in a poll by the British Film
Institute. He also holds the record for the most films screened in the main
competition at Cannes, with 15.
Two of his films, The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)
and I, Daniel Blake (2016), received the Palme d'Or at
the Cannes Film Festival, making him one of the rare filmmakers to win the
award twice.
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9. Ruben Östlund
Ruben Östlund (born 13 April 1974) is a Swedish filmmaker
best known for his satirical black comedy films Force Majeure (2014), The
Square (2017) and Triangle of Sadness (2022).
On 23 January 2023, he won Best Director at the Guldbagge
Awards for Triangle of Sadness; the film also picked up several
other nominations. In the same period, Triangle of Sadness received
Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original
Screenplay.
In 2017, his film The Square, loosely inspired
by some of his own experiences and an art installation with Kalle Boman,
competed at the Cannes Film Festival, where it ultimately won the Palme
d'Or. Afterwards, he pursued the project Triangle of Sadness, a
satirical film about the wealthy elite, winning his second Palme d'Or in 2022.
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Why These Palme d'Or Legends Matter
These filmmakers are not just repeat winners; they represent
different eras, movements and political or social perspectives in world cinema.
From Coppola’s operatic epics to Imamura’s gritty realism and Östlund’s sharp
satire, their Cannes victories helped shape how global cinephiles talk about
“serious” cinema and festival prestige.
If you love tracking film festival history,
awards records and the legacy of great directors, the story of these Palme d'Or
legends is essential viewing and reading.
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