Julia Ducournau, born in 1983, is a French filmmaker. She is known for Raw and Titane.
As a Parisian who grew up under a dermatologist father and a gynecologist mother, Ducournau made a name for herself of making movies with a Body Horror theme. She studied English literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne, then got into the highly reputable La Fémis where she studied screenwriting. Her short film Junior won an award at Cannes' International Critics Week section and continued up with that her feature film debut Raw with Junior lead actress Garance Marillier. Raw received much acclaim for its use of cannibalism as a metaphor for sexual awakening, and netted her FIPRESCI prize and César Awardnote nomination for Best Director.
Her follow-up Titane premiered at Cannes Film Festival in June 2021 and garnered her the festival's top prize Palme d'Or. This makes her the first female director since Jane Campion for The Piano in 1993, the first sole female director, and the fourth womannote to receive the prize.
Filmography
- Corps-Vivants (short), 2005
- Tout va bien (short), 2007
- Junior (short), 2011
- Mange (Made-for-TV Movie), 2012
- Raw, 2016
- Titane, 2021
Tropes associated with Julia Ducournau include
- Author Appeal: She seems to have things with human characters going through painful bodily transformation. And it often serves as a metaphor for something.
- Black Comedy
- Creator Thumbprint: Body Horror, father-daughter relationships, and the first names Justine (a Shout-Out to Marquis de Sade's novel), Alexia, and Adrien.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Her earliest movie memory was when her parents shown The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) to her when she was six, which led her becoming obsessed with horror genre.
- She Also Did: Between Raw and Titane, she directed first two episodes of the second season of Servant. The show's executive producer M. Night Shyamalan loved Raw so much that he hired her.
