French filmmaker Julia Ducournau was BOTD in 1983. Born in Paris to a gynaecologist mother and a dermatologist father, she attended the prestigious film school La Fémis. Her first short film Junior chronicled a girl who begins to shed her skin like a snake after contracting a stomach bug. Her 2012 debut feature film Mange (Eat), originally screened on French television, follows a recovering bulimic who seeks revenge on her college tormenter. Her debut feature film Grave (Raw) premiered at the 2016 Cannes Festival, shocking audiences with its graphic depictions of cannibalism. Highly praised by critics, it won the Best First Feature award at the London Film Festival. She is best known for her 2021 film Titane, a deranged body horror fantasy about an androgynous erotic dancer who gets impregnated by a Cadillac, breaks her own nose, disguises herself as a man and joins a troupe of dancing shirtless firemen. One of the most ferociously-debated films of the year, Titane was praised as a successor to the 1990s New Queer Cinema movement, and dismissed by others as incoherent nonsense. Ducournau was the surprise winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival, making her only the second woman to win the prize. Her 2025 Alpha, a sci-fi-horror film about a teenaged girl with a mysterious illness, also premiered at the Cannes Festival. Intended as an allegory of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, it was poorly reviewed and has struggled to find distribution outside of France. Like most French artists, little is known of Ducournau’s personal life or relationship status. She earns Honorary SuperGay status for the gender fluidity and queer perspective of her work, and her relentless exploration of the limits of the human body.