Imagine winning at Cannes, then Venice, then Berlin — taking home the top prize at each of the world’s “Big Three” film festivals.
For most directors, even one of those wins would be a career‑defining miracle, the kind of line that forever changes how their name appears in film history books.
But a tiny group of filmmakers has done the unthinkable: they have won all three.
This ultra‑rare feat is often called the “Triple Crown of Festivals”, and it may be even rarer than the famous EGOT — winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony across four different industries.
Today, we’re opening the Cinema Awards Archive and looking at the legends who conquered Cannes, Venice and Berlin, one Palme d’Or, Golden Lion and Golden Bear at a time.
- What defines the “Big Three” film festivals
- The directors who actually completed the Triple Crown
- Near‑miss legends who are one trophy short
- Why this feat is rarer than an EGOT in awards history
Before we meet the directors, it’s worth setting the stakes and understanding what makes the “Big Three” festivals so powerful.
Cannes Film Festival
Held on the French Riviera, Cannes is home to the Palme d’Or, arguably the single most prestigious prize in world cinema.
Its competition line‑up is fiercely curated, and a Palme win instantly rewrites a director’s international reputation.
Venice Film Festival
Venice is the oldest film festival on the planet, and its Golden Lion has launched everything from arthouse landmarks to future Oscar winners.
In the modern era, Venice has also become a key launchpad for awards‑season juggernauts.
Berlin International Film Festival
Berlin’s Golden Bear is known for spotlighting bold, politically engaged and socially conscious cinema.
The festival often embraces formally adventurous films that speak directly to the issues of their time.
Each of these festivals receives thousands of submissions and invites only a small selection into their main competition line‑ups.
Winning once is extremely difficult; winning twice, across two different festivals, is rare; winning top prizes at all three means entering one of the smallest clubs in film history.
Our story begins with Henri‑Georges Clouzot, sometimes nicknamed “the French Hitchcock” for his mastery of suspense and psychological tension.
He became the first director ever to complete the Cannes‑Venice‑Berlin Triple Crown — and he did it with remarkable speed.
Venice 1949 – Manon
Clouzot secured the Golden Lion with this post‑war reinterpretation of the Manon Lescaut story, blending romantic tragedy with moral ambiguity.
Cannes 1953 – The Wages of Fear
At Cannes, he took top honours with the nail‑biting thriller The Wages of Fear, which won the festival’s Grand Prix, the equivalent of today’s Palme d’Or.
Berlin 1953 – The Wages of Fear
In a looser era of premiere rules, the same film went on to triumph at Berlin in 1953, where it also won the Golden Bear.
Clouzot didn’t just win all three; he did it in a span of just a few years, with The Wages of Fear acting as a double strike at Cannes and Berlin.
By modern standards — with strict world‑premiere requirements and fiercely guarded competition slots — that kind of run would be almost impossible to repeat.
Next comes Michelangelo Antonioni, the Italian modernist who transformed cinematic storytelling with his cool, alienated vision of modern life.
His Triple Crown reads like a curated tour of his greatest hits.
Berlin 1961 – La Notte
Antonioni earned the Golden Bear for this moody portrait of a disintegrating marriage and the emptiness beneath modern success.
Venice 1964 – Red Desert
He took the Golden Lion with Red Desert, an abstract, colour‑saturated exploration of anxiety and alienation in an industrial world.
Cannes 1967 – Blow‑Up
At Cannes, Antonioni won for Blow‑Up, a stylish, enigmatic London mystery that became a defining film of the 1960s.
Together, these three films show how Antonioni turned existential crisis into pure cinema, with long takes, empty spaces and characters who seem lost in both their relationships and their environments.
His Triple Crown isn’t just about trophies; it’s a map of how modern art cinema learned to speak the language of ennui and emotional disconnection.
Then there is Robert Altman, one of American cinema’s great iconoclasts, who built his reputation on risky, idiosyncratic projects instead of safe prestige vehicles.
His path to the Triple Crown stretches over more than two decades and crosses wildly different genres.
Cannes 1970 – MASH
Altman won the Palme d’Or with this darkly comic, anti‑war film that clashed with studio expectations yet electrified audiences and critics.
Berlin 1976 – Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson
Berlin honoured him with the Golden Bear for a revisionist Western that dismantles the myth of the American hero.
Venice 1993 – Short Cuts
Finally, Venice awarded him the Golden Lion for Short Cuts, a sprawling adaptation of Raymond Carver stories that weaves dozens of characters into a vast tapestry of Los Angeles life.
Altman’s Triple Crown has a clear through‑line despite the tonal variety: ensemble casts, overlapping dialogue and a deep skepticism about American myths and institutions.
Rather than smoothing out his edges to chase awards, he won the Big Three on his own terms.
In the 21st century, the elusive Triple Crown club quietly expanded again with the arrival of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi.
Unlike many festival legends, Panahi achieved his feat while battling censorship, arrest and an official ban on filmmaking in his home country.
Venice 2000 – The Circle
Venice came first: The Circle, an unflinching portrait of women navigating systemic oppression in modern Iran, won the Golden Lion and instantly established him as one of the key voices in contemporary world cinema.
Berlin 2015 – Taxi
Berlin then honoured him with the Golden Bear for Taxi, a film shot largely inside a cab he “drives” through Tehran, blurring fiction and documentary while he was officially forbidden to direct.
Cannes 2025 – It Was Just an Accident
Finally, in 2025, Panahi completed the Triple Crown when It Was Just an Accident won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, making him only the fourth director in history to take the top prizes at Cannes, Venice and Berlin.
What makes his Triple Crown extraordinary isn’t just the list of trophies, but the fact that he earned them while enduring bans, trials and travel restrictions, turning his films into acts of survival and testimony.
For every director who completes the Triple Crown, there are giants who remain one trophy short.
These “near misses” say as much about festival taste and politics as they do about individual careers.
Jean‑Luc Godard
It is one of cinema’s great ironies that Jean‑Luc Godard, perhaps the most famous French director of the 20th century, never won the top prize at Cannes.
He collected Jury Prizes and special awards on the Croisette, but the Palme d’Or remained out of reach, often because his work was too combative, too experimental or too divisive for a consensus jury decision.
Godard did, however, win Berlin’s top prize with Alphaville (1965) and Venice’s Golden Lion with First Name: Carmen (1983), giving him two legs of the Triple Crown.
The missing piece is Cannes, where his influence is everywhere in the programming even if he never claimed the ultimate trophy.
Wim Wenders
Wim Wenders is often described as German cinema royalty, and yet the Golden Bear has eluded him despite Berlin being his home festival.
He has accumulated Silver Bears and other honours, but never the top prize on his own turf.
Wenders has won the Golden Lion at Venice for The State of Things (1982) and the Palme d’Or at Cannes for Paris, Texas (1984), giving him two‑thirds of the Triple Crown.
Berlin remains the missing chapter in his festival story.
Terrence Malick
Terrence Malick makes films that feel like visual poetry, combining philosophical voice‑overs with rapturous natural imagery.
Berlin awarded him the Golden Bear for The Thin Red Line (1998), the meditative war epic that marked his return after a 20‑year hiatus.
Cannes later gave him the Palme d’Or for The Tree of Life (2011), a visionary blend of family drama and cosmic spectacle.
If Malick ever brings a major new work to Venice and wins the Golden Lion, he would immediately join the Triple Crown club — and among active directors, he is often mentioned as one of the most plausible candidates to close the gap.
So who else is on the verge of joining Clouzot, Antonioni, Altman and Panahi?
Festival watchers love to speculate about the next director who might go three‑for‑three.
Ang Lee
Ang Lee already has multiple Golden Bears (for films including The Wedding Banquet and Sense and Sensibility) and multiple Golden Lions (for Brokeback Mountain and Lust, Caution), showcasing his extraordinary versatility across cultures and genres.
Yet he has never won the Palme d’Or, suggesting that Cannes has historically under‑rewarded his particular brand of intimate, humanist storytelling.
Ken Loach
Ken Loach has two Palme d’Or wins, cementing his status as a Cannes institution.
But despite working in a social‑realist style that seems tailor‑made for Berlin, he has not secured the Golden Bear, nor has he taken the Golden Lion at Venice.
For now, he remains without a clear path to the full Triple Crown.
The broader reality is that the festival circuit is becoming more fragmented and brand‑driven.
Directors tend to be loyal to the festival that “discovered” them: Pedro Almodóvar repeatedly premieres at Cannes, while others lean toward Venice or skip the festival circuit to chase box‑office dominance, like Christopher Nolan.
The era of the travelling auteur who regularly competes at all three festivals is slowly fading, which makes future Triple Crowns even less likely.
Tip for the blog: this is a great place to embed a future graphic titled “Who’s One Win Away?” listing directors with two of the three trophies and teasing a follow‑up video on their festival journeys.
Calling this feat “rarer than an EGOT” is not just a catchy phrase; it reflects how different the two achievements really are.
An EGOT stretches across television, music, film and theatre, and as of the mid‑2020s there are several dozen artists who have completed it or are one award away.
By contrast, the festival Triple Crown is tied to a very specific niche: arthouse and international cinema that survives brutal competition at three elite events, often in different eras and under shifting artistic trends and political climates.
A creator can chase an Emmy one year and a Grammy the next, but a director seeking the Triple Crown has to convince three independent juries, in three different countries, that their film represents the pinnacle of world cinema — sometimes decades apart.
That is why even giants like Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman and Martin Scorsese never completed the trifecta, despite their towering influence on film history.
The list of Triple Crown winners is short not because these directors are “better” than everyone else, but because the alignment of timing, festival politics and artistic breakthroughs is so hard to repeat three times.
Imagine an end montage featuring posters for The Wages of Fear, Blow‑Up, La Notte, Red Desert, MASH, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, Short Cuts and a key Jafar Panahi film such as The Circle or Taxi.
These films are not just trophy‑winners; they are turning points in how cinema looks, feels and thinks about the world.
From Clouzot’s white‑knuckle suspense to Antonioni’s existential puzzles, from Altman’s chaotic ensembles to Panahi’s defiant micro‑budget experiments, these directors used the festival stage to redefine what cinema could be.
Their Triple Crowns are less about perfection and more about persistence, reinvention and the ability to speak across borders.
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