Born in Paris in 1983 to doctor parents, Julia Ducournau studied at La Fémis. Her films, in the tradition of French body horror, deal with transformation, desire and the body as a site of metamorphosis. Raw (2016), about a vegetarian veterinary student who develops a taste for human flesh, was a sensation at Cannes and Toronto. Titane (2021), a daring story of a woman with a metal plate in her head who is pursued by the police and takes on the identity of a missing boy, won the Palme d'Or, the second time that a woman had won it alone.