The Film Fest Triple Crown: Who's Next?
Wednesday, June 25, 2025 at 2:00PM 
Juliette Binoche's jury made history when they gave Jafar Panahi the Palme d'Or.
One month ago, Jafar Panahi took the Palme d'Or at Cannes for It Was Just an Accident and thus became the fourth director to win top honors from the Croisette, the Berlinale, and the Venice Film Festival. The Iranian master joins the ranks of Henri-Georges Clouzot, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Robert Altman. However. If you exclude ties and those cineastes who won two prizes for the same film, then Panahi and Antonioni are in an exclusive club of two. Inspired by Eric Blume's musings on the Triple Crown of Acting – Oscar, Tony, and Emmy – I started to ask myself what other filmmakers are close to achieving the same Palm, Golden Lion, and Bear combo. Who's next? The answers might surprise you…
Before going into what living filmmakers have two of the three awards, let's take another look at the crowned quartet and remember the films that got them there.
MANON (1949) Henri-Georges Clouzot
HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT
- MANON (1949) Golden Lion winner
- THE WAGES OF FEAR (1953) Golden Berlin Bear + Palme d'Or winner
By achieving this triple crown in a matter of five years, Clouzot was. Both the first and quickest to do so. Of course, it helps that he took both top honors from Berlin and Cannes in 1953 for the same film, back when the festivals were much less stingy about sharing competition slots or as obsesses with absolute world premieres. Nowadays, such a thing is no longer possible. What's most impressive is that, although the French director played at Cannes and Venice multiple times over the years, he only competed at Berlin once.
LA NOTTE (1961) Michelangelo Antonioni
MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI
- LA NOTTE (1961) Golden Berlin Bear winner
- RED DESERT (1964) Golden Lion winner
- BLOW-UP (1966) Palme d'Or winner
At the 11th Berlin International Film Festival, Antonioni won a special prize from FIPRESCI before taking the Golden Bear. The critics' recognition meant to celebrate the director's entire career, a filmography of relative greenness that already felt revolutionary. In that regard, we can almost consider the victory at the end of the fest as an acknowledgment of his status. It was also the only time Antonioni ever presented a film in competition at Berlin. He was much more of a Cannes mainstay, competing five times, from 1960 to 1982, taking two Jury prizes before his Palme and a special Anniversary prize afterward.
I should add that, in 1983, Antonioni received a Career Golden Lion. Also, similarly to Panahi, the Italian master received the Golden Leopard from Locarno before any of the other festivals recognized him. He won for Il Grido in 1957.
M*A*S*H (1970) Robert Altman
ROBERT ALTMAN
- M*A*S*H (1970) Palme d'Or winner
- BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS OR SITTING BULL'S HISTORY LESSON (1976) Golden Berlin Bear winner
- SHORT CUTS (1993) Golden Lion winner, tied with Kieslowski's Three Colors: Blue
It's always curious to remember that Altman won the Berlin Bear for one of his most forgotten movies. He also got the German and French festival honors for his first time competing there, while Venice made him wait for the prize and, even then, only gave it to him in a tie. It should be noted that, out of these four, Robert Altman competed the most times at these European festivals' main section – three at Berlin, seven at Cannes, three at Venice.
You may notice that, in contrast with Clouzot's five-year interval and Antonioni's six, Altman took a long time to cinch the triple crown. Over two decades! Panahi would break his record with a quarter-century between Venice and Cannes.
THE CIRCLE (2000) Jafar Panahi
JAFAR PANAHI
- THE CIRCLE (2000) Golden Lion winner
- TAXI (2015) Golden Berlin Bear winner
- IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT (2025) Palme d'Or winner
In all of Cannes history, Panahi is the first person to take the Camera d'Or for his feature directorial debut and then win the Palme. What a magnificent journey it has been from 1995's The White Balloon to this year's consecration. Indeed, it took a while until Cannes would program him in the Main Competition, with the masterful Crimson Gold relegated to Un Certain Regard in 2003. Before he finally competed for the Palme in 2018 with Three Faces, Panahi had already won Venice on his first try, Berlin on his third, and even Locarno with 1997's The Mirror. His The Circle is one of the most awarded films to ever screen at Venice, winning five different honors from five distinct juries, including Main Competition, UNICEF, and FIPRESCI.
Moving on, let's examine our candidates, all living directors who have won two prizes and are only missing one. We're going through them by the festival's position in the calendar, starting with Berlin.
VERA DRAKE (2004) Mike Leigh
MISSING THE GOLDEN BEAR
MIKE LEIGH won the Palme in 1996 for Secrets & Lies, and the Golden Lion in 2004 for Vera Drake. Both films went on to become his biggest players in the mainstream awards race, earning him Best Director Oscar nominations along the way. He hasn't been as lucky with Berlin and, indeed, has only ever competed for the Golden Bear once, back in 2008, with Happy-Go-Lucky. That film lost the festival's top honor to José Padilha's Elite Squad, but it earned Sally Hawkins a Silver Bear for Best Actress.
Considering that Cannes and Venice rejected Hard Truths last year, one wonders what would have happened if Leigh had completed it a few months sooner and submitted it to Berlin. Either that, or waited a bit longer and tried this year's Berlinale instead. Could Leigh have taken the Bear away from Mati Diop or Dag Johan Haugerud? Part of me wants to believe so, but it might have ended like Happy-Go-Lucky and only scored the Silver Bear for Marianne Jean-Baptiste's titanic turn.
For his 16th theatrical feature film, Leigh is reuniting with many of the producing partners that helped bring Hard Truths to the screen. He's shooting it this year, according to the trades, and riding a wave of renewed critical acclaim. In other words, he might be on his way to the Triple Crown sooner rather than later.
WIM WENDERS is in a similar position. He won Venice in 1982 for The State of Things, and Cannes followed suit in 1984 for Paris, Texas. For a German director, it's odd he very rarely competes at the Berlinale, especially since, the only time he ever did, Wenders won the Jury Prize with The Million Dollar Hotel. He was also awarded an Honorary Golden Bear in 2015, as befits his status as one of the biggest names to emerge from the New German Cinema movement.
If you had asked me a decade ago if Wenders could ever take the Triple Crown, I'd have been awfully skeptical. Mostly because his work had fallen in critical favor to a calamitous degree, with only some non-fiction projects surviving the wave of discontentment. However, the double whammy of Perfect Days and Anselm in 2023 revitalizes Wenders' reputation. Since he shows no interest in slowing down, a competitive Berlin Bear feels within the realm of possibility. The only issue will be convincing the man to submit there, rather than Cannes or Venice.
FIRE AT SEA (2016) Gianfranco Rosi
MISSING THE PALME D'OR
GIANFRANCO ROSI is not winning the Palme anytime soon, not while Thierry Frémaux remains the festival's artistic director. If it was rare for documentary work to find a place within the Cannes main competition before, Frémaux's tenure has seen them become almost entirely unrepresented. So, unless Rosi ventures into narrative filmmaking, he'll have a hard time becoming the second Italian to take the film festival Triple Crown. Indeed, he has never premiered a film at the Cannes Film Festival. It's a pity, especially when you remember that the Golden Lion-winning Sacro GRA from 2013 and the Golden Bear-winning Fire at Sea from 2016 are two of the best victors either festival has seen in the 21st century.
ANG LEE is almost as unlikely as Rosi but for very different reasons. A prodigal son of the Taiwanese New Wave, the director was twice the champion of Berlin and Venice. He won the Bear for The Wedding Banquet in 1993, tied with Fei Xie's Woman Sesame Oil Maker, and again in 1995 for Sense & Sensibility. The Lion came later, in 2005 for Brokeback Mountain and 2007 for Lust, Caution. He competed for the Palme twice, with The Ice Storm and Taking Woodstock. Neither film earned him any new trophies for the mantelpiece, though James Schamus got a Best Screenplay prize for the former. Sadly, I struggle to envision Lee returning to Cannes, as his career has become increasingly focused on studio-backed blockbuster projects that often seem more about pushing technological limits than creating proper great cinema. Maybe the upcoming Old Gold Mountain and Thrilla in Manila will be different, but I have my doubts.
ZHANG YIMOU is in a similar position, all things considered. The Chinese director won the Golden Berlin Bear in 1988 for his breakthrough, Red Sorghum. He later earned two Golden Lions from Venice, in 1992 for The Story of Qiu Ju and in 1999 for Not One Less. Cannes has been less welcoming, though To Live did win the Grand Prize of the Jury in 1994, tantamount to second place, losing the Palme to Pulp Fiction. The issue with Zhang is that his recent output has deviated from what the Croisette typically programs. And it's not even just about Frémaux and company's known resistance to programming auteurs who aren't from Europe, Canada or the USA. Apart from 2020's One Second, a lot of his work leans toward the mainstream, action thrills and big budget excess, the sort of thing that only screens at Cannes in Out of Competition slots.
THE PIANIST (2002) Roman Polanski
MISSING THE GOLDEN LION
ROMAN POLANSKI came incredibly close to taking the Triple Crown in 2019 when his The Officer and a Gentleman finished second behind Todd Phillips' Joker at the Venice Film Festival. Had Lucrecia Martel's jury inverted its top honors, the controversial auteur would have beaten Panahi to it, surely igniting a wave of discourse the likes of which we've rarely seen in film circles. If he ever wins, he'll also be the director who took the longest time to do so, having won Berlin all the way back in 1966 for Cul-De-Sac. He later took the Palme d'Or for The Pianist in 2002 before nabbing a Best Director Oscar for the same film. While his crimes may seem like the director's biggest hurdle, I think the calamitous reception of 2023's The Palace is a worse obstacle for festival juries. If Polanski's following projects are similar to that flotsam farce, he's never getting the Lion.
COSTA-GAVRAS won the Palme d'Or in 1982 for Missing and the Golden Bear in 1989 for Music Box. In both cases, his victory came in the form of a tie, first with Serif Gören's Yol, then with Jirí Menzel's Larks on a String. The Greek director has only ever competed in Venice twice, for 1979's Clair de Femme and 1983's Hanna K., meaning a victory there is already more difficult than not. And though he keeps working into his 90s, Costa-Gavras has been absent from the three major fests for some time. However, he's not entirely absent from the circuit. Just last year, he presented Le Dernier Souffle in competition at San Sebastián, losing the Golden Seashell to Albert Serra's Afternoons of Solitude.
TERRENCE MALICK feels much likelier than his Greek colleague. He won the Golden Bear in 1999 for The Thin Red Line and the Palme d'Or in 2011 for The Tree of Life. And though Cannes remains the festival that most often premiered the Philosopher turned filmmaker's work, he has competed for the Golden Lion twice before, with 2012's To the Wonder and 2016's Voyage of Time. If The Way of the Wind ever gets finished, ceasing its interminable journey to the screen, Malick could become a Triple Crown winner, aided by a sense of monumental anticipation surrounding his take on the life of Jesus. Some have even speculated that Venice 2025 might see its world premiere. We'll have to wait and see.
Going over these seven names, Malick is my bet. Leigh and Wenders are close behind, in that order. Good luck to the others, who might yet surprise us even if, right now, I just don't see it for them. Do you agree? Also, should I consider the Film Festival Triple Crown for actors? Like with directors, only four individuals have achieved it – Jack Lemmon, Sean Penn, Juliette Binoche, and Julianne Moore. But unlike directors, there are many more candidates to go through. A grand total of 25, to be precise.
Let your voices be known in the comments! Share your best guesses!!
Reader Comments (3)
I'd like Leigh to do it but i'm glad he didn't get any awards for Hard Truths one of his worst.
I think this is fascinating but I am gointg to argue that the next person to do it will be someone who only has one of these prizes to date. Not sure who that is but history sesems to suggest that when you're hot you're hot so maybe someone new or in the middle of their career with one big win already could do it,
Some suggestions:
Only has BERLIN to date but...
MATI DIOP (Senegal) - Dahomey (still rising obviously and festivals like her in general)
CARLA SIMON (spain) - Alcarras (still rising obviously)
RADU JUDE (Romania) - Bad Luck Banging or Looney Porn (still respected but how long can the fervor for Romanian cinema last?)
ILDIKO ENYEDI (Hungary) -On Body and Soul.... but her next film (which sounds fascinating) is headed for venice. hmmm...
Only VENICE to date but...
PEDRO ALMODOVAR (spain) - weird that he hasn't won more top prizes... and that the Room Next Door was the one to win one of the big three is even stranger.
YORGOS LANTHIMOS (greece) - Poor Things... i could see him winning at least one more top festival prize
CHLOE ZHAO (us) - nomadland... her next film Hamnet could go to Venice but she's already won there so...
only CANNES to date but...
HIROKAZU KOREADA (japan) Shoplifters... surely he has another festival win in him, right?
JUSTINE TRIET (france) Anatomy of a Fall --- is that her international breakthrough AND peak or will she keep delivering?
Of those I think i might guess Mati Diop... I mean, she's quite young still and we know Cannes likes her since she won the Grand Prix for Atlantics
Nathaniel: such a shame that Room Next Door is his 1 winner. I think its legit his worst movie.
Claudio: I love that Panahi joins two of my most treasured directors: Antonioni and Altman to this achievement. And no shade to Clouzot: if any film should win two top awards, why not Wages of Fear.
I feel Berlin would be tough to win last - it tends to be more interested in fresh, new talents, so my money is on Malick taking a Lion and joining the club.