Titane: Palme d’Or-Winning Horror Movie Gets Trailer and Release Date

Earlier this month, filmmaker Julia Ducournau made history by being only the second female director to win the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, which is regarded by many to be the highest distinction a filmmaker can earn. Making the achievement even more impressive is that she scored the honor with her horror film Titane, as most prestigious festivals are known to dismiss the accomplishments of genre storytelling. Following the film earning notoriety in the wake of festival screenings, NEON has confirmed that Titane will be landing in theaters on October 1st, with the distributor also releasing the above trailer for the film.

The film is merely described, “TITANE: A metal highly resistant to heat and corrosion, with high tensile strength alloys, often used in medical prostheses due to its pronounced biocompatibility.”

Titane was written and directed by Ducournau and stars Agathe Rousselle and Vincent Lindon.

The film currently sits at 96% positive reviews on aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. IndieWire‘s David Ehrlich shared of the new film, “There’s no denying that Titane is the work of a demented visionary in full command of her wild mind; a shimmering aria of fire and metal that introduces itself as the psychopathic lovechild of David Cronenberg’s Crash and Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man before shapeshifting into a modern fable about how badly people just need someone to take care of them and vice-versa.”

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Boyd van Hoiej, meanwhile, pointed out that “quite hardcore genre conventions are spiked with contemporary considerations of femininity, queerness, and gender-bending to explore issues related to bodily intimacy and independence, sex and relationships in this new millennium.”

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, there was no Cannes in 2020, but in 2019, Bong Joon-ho scored the Palme d’Or for Parasite, another unconventional experience that leaned fully into unsettling genre elements. While the film might not have made a major impact on American audiences in its initial theatrical release, it would go on to score the Academy Award for Best Picture that year, along with Joon-ho scoring the Oscar for Best Director, as well as for Best International Screenplay with Han Jin-won.

Ducournau’s debut film Raw was a major hit among festival audiences, offering glimpses of her ambitious and horrifying storytelling abilities.

Stay tuned for details on Titane before it hits theaters on October 1st.

Are you looking forward to the new film? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!