When a film wins even one Oscar, never mind when one sweeps the awards, most everyone interested in films knows about it. You’ll find that fact plastered on the Blu-ray cover and it’ll feature in the adverts. The biggest Oscar winners are known. But what about the biggest film festival award-winners?

The Oscars and the host of film festivals are clearly quite different, the Oscars have much more of a focus on US films, as opposed to film festivals which look at films released globally. And, whilst the Oscars has a whole celebrity glamour theme, film festivals are much more indie and artistic and offer a different type of recognition. That being said, it is not irregular for films that win at film festivals to at the very least gain Oscar nominations and sometimes, even wins.

Despite their obvious differences, one might wonder which films, directors, actors and actresses have performed best at film festivals. Well, you’re in luck, our experts at Giggster have looked at various popular film festivals from the last two decades to root out the best of the best amongst film festival winners.

Films that have won the most awards

Upon looking at the results from twelve different film festivals, we noted that there weren’t many films that won multiple awards across the spectrum of festivals we looked at. In fact, just four films were multiple winners.

1. Tsotsi (2005) - 2 film festival awards

One of the three films to win more than one award across the twelve most popular film festivals on the planet, Tsotsi (directed by Gavin Hood) won both the People’s Choice Award (Toronto IFF) and the Michael Powell Award (Edinburgh IFF), the latter film festival being Tsotsi’s premiere. Based on the novel of the same name, the film follows the story of David/Tsotsi, who by circumstances out of his control becomes a street thug. The film predominantly explores the theme of redemption, how a bad person can become better. It also received praise for the performances of Presley Chweneyagae (David/Tsotsi) and Terry Pheto (Miriam).

1. Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) - 2 film festival awards

Winner of both the Grand Jury Prize (Sundance) and The Sutherland Trophy (BFI London), Beasts of the Southern Wild also won a variety of other film festival awards, including four at Cannes, though we only looked at the main film award from each festival. The film's story follows the story of Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) and her father Wink (Dwight Henry), the latter contracting a mysterious illness, causing the natural world to go out of control. Praised for its stunning cinematography, amazing female lead and exploration of climate change, many critics hailed the film as one of the best of 2012.

1. Nomadland (2020) - 2 film festival awards

Nomandland, directed by Chloé Zhao, secured awards at both the Venice Film Festival (Golden Lion Award) and Toronto International Film Festival (People’s Choice Award). Based on a non-fiction novel by the title of Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder, the film follows the story of Fern (Frances McDormand) a recent widow who, following the economic collapse of her town, decides to travel the United States as a nomad. The film also features fictionalised versions of real-life nomads, such as Linda May, Swankie and Bob Wells.

1. The Cloud in Her Room (2020) - 2 film festival awards

The Cloud in Her Room, directed by Xinyuan Zheng Lu, also secured awards at two different films festivals. The first came from Hong Kong’s Young Cinema Chinese Competition (2020) and then the Tiger Award at Rotterdam IFF (2020). The film follows the story of Zhao Muzi, who returns home for a festival to find her parents divorced, it is also shot in black and white.

Actors that have won the most awards

1. Joaquin Phoenix - 3 film festival awards

Narrowly coming out on top for actors with the most film festival awards is Joaquin Phoenix (Hotel Rwanda and Gladiator), he’s secured acting awards at Cannes (Prix d'interprétation masculine), Venice (Volpi Cup) and Toronto (Tribute Award for Best Actor) film festivals. His most recent film, Joker, (directed by Todd Phillips) a stand-alone film that portrayed a new perspective on the origin of the infamous titular DC comics villain, saw Phoenix surge in prominence.

1. Javier Bardem - 3 film festival awards

Javier Bardem has won three film festival awards, across the two most prestigious festivals. His first two came at Venice (2000 and 2004) for Before Night Falls and The Sea Inside and his third win was at Cannes (2010) for his performance in Biutiful. He was also the first Spanish actor to be nominated for an Academy Award for Before Night Falls and then to win one for his performance in No Country for Old Men (2009).

2. Benicio del Toro - 2 film festival awards

Having portrayed the Collector in the MCU, Benicio del Toro (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) clearly took the role home with him, as he’s collected two awards here. He secured the Prix d'interprétation Masculine (Cannes) and the Silver Bear Award (Berlin IFF), the latter award for his role in Traffic (2000) and the former for his performance in Che (2008).

2. Mads Mikkelson - 2 film festival awards

Mads Mikkelson (Casino Royale and Doctor Strange), also earned two actor awards across the twelve film festivals we looked at. His first film festival award came at Cannes (Prix d'interprétation masculine) for his role in The Hunt (2012) and the second at San Sebastián International Film Festival (Silver Shell for Best Actor) for his role in Another Round (2020).

2. Oscar Martínez - 2 film festival awards

Oscar Martínez is the last of our actors to have received two different film festival awards for acting. His first was from San Sebastian (Silver Shell for Best Actor) in 2008 for his performance in Empty Nest and his second was from Venice (Volpi Cup for Best Actor) in 2016 for his role in the comedy-drama The Distinguished Citizen.

Actresses that have won the most awards

1. Rachel Mwanza - 2 film festival awards

Rachel Mwanza comes in the top place for the actress ranking, scoring two awards - both won in the same year to boot. In 2012 she won at both the Berlin International Film Festival (the Silver Bear for Best Actress) and the Tribeca Film Festival (Best Actress in a Narrative Film) both of them for her performance in War Witch (2012) which explores the story of a child forced into a civil war in Africa.

1. Charlotte Rampling - 2 film festival awards

Next up, Charlotte Rampling OBE (Dexter) also won two awards, the first coming at the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival (Silver Bear for Best Actress) for her role in 45 Years (2015) and the second at the 2017 Venice International Film Festival for her performance in Hannah (2017). Prior to winning these awards, Rampling was made an OBE for her contribution to the arts and 2015 was also the year she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the European Film Awards.

1. Nina Hoss - 2 film festival awards

The third addition to this section is Nina Hoss, best known for her role in Homeland seasons four, five and six (2014-2017) and she recently secured a recurring role in the forthcoming season of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (2018). She won her first film festival award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2007 (Silver Bear for Best Actress) for her role in Yella (2007). More recently, she won the Silver Shell for Best Actress at the San Sebastian Film Festival (2019) for her role in The Audition (2019), though since it was a fiercely contested award that year, she had to share it with Greta Fernández.

1. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi - 2 film festival awards

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi has won her fair share of film festival awards, some as a director and two as an actress, making her the final person in this ranking. She won two best actress awards at the Tribeca Film Festival, the first time in 2003 for It’s Easier for a Camel… and then again in 2014 for Human Capital.

Directors that have won the most awards

For this section, we looked at the individual awards given to directors as well as the directors of films that won the ‘best film’ awards. This allowed us to discover the most successful directors at film festivals.

1. Ang Lee - 6 film festival wins

This director is probably best known for his work on Brokeback Mountain and The Life of Pi both of which he received academy awards for. However, it would appear that Ang Lee has done some pretty remarkable things in the film festival arena. Having won a total of six film festival awards (both for film and director categories), Ang Lee is also the only director to have won Berlin IFF’s Golden Bear twice and one of four directors to win Venice’s Golden Lion twice. Ang Lee also received his nation’s second-highest civilian honour, the Order of Brilliant Star.

2. Asghar Farhadi - 5 film festival wins

Ashgar Farhadi comes in second, with five awards across the ones we looked at, in 2009 and 2011, he claimed two different awards at the Berlin IFF for his works on About Elly (2009) and A Separation (2011). He has been praised for his films which tend to explore the human condition and portray the intimate and challenging stories of family conflicts.

2. ​​Chloé Zhao - 5 film festival wins

One of the films she has won an award for has previously featured on this list, Nomadland (2020) which saw Zhao win at both Venice and Toronto film festivals. In fact, Zhao’s first-ever feature film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015, gaining much critical acclaim and then a nomination for Independent Spirit Awards for Best Film and Best Director. Her most recent project was Marvel’s Eternals (2021) which became one of the highest-grossing films in the year of its release, which she co-wrote and directed.

2. Michael Haneke - 5 film festival awards

Michael Haneke is our final director for this ranking, having also won five awards at film festivals. He’s claimed three awards from Cannes, two of his films, The White Ribbon (2009) and Amour (2012) won the Palme d’Or and then he himself won the director award (Prix de la mise en scène) in 2005 for his work on Caché (2005). His works are famous for examining and depicting social issues and estrangement within society.

Film Fest films with highest earnings

1. Nomadland

Box Office Earnings: $39.5 million

Nomadland comes out on top for our films that grossed highest at the box office, winning two film festival awards, then went on to gain six Oscar nominations and three wins. One might make the link that the initial wins at film festivals helped the film go on to gain much higher levels of success.

2. Beasts of the Southern Wild

Box Office Earnings: $23.3 million

Like Nomadland, Beasts of the Southern Wild won two film festival awards in 2012, and then at the 2013 Oscar awards it went on to be nominated for four awards: Best Picture, Director, Actress and Adapted Screenplay. While it won none of those Oscars, this film with a $1.8 million budget, went on to gross $23.3 million at the box office.

3. Tsotsi

Box Office Earnings: $11.5 million

And finally, Tsotsi, having won at both Edinburgh and Toronto, this film also went on to gain Oscar nominations interestingly enough. Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film and indeed winning it, also turning a $3 million budget into $11.5 million at the box office.

Methodology -

We started by acquiring a list of popular film festivals, utilising Mack Sennet Studios to determine the most popular ones.

From there, we noted down the winners of the main film, actor, actress and director awards across each film festival (where each category was applicable) using Wikipedia and IMDB to acquire the winners over the last two decades (2000-2021).

We then counted up the winners of multiple awards and ranked them. There was not a great number of multiple winners across the awards, most for the director categories - as such we combined the winners of director specific awards and the directors of the films that won film awards to give a better reflection of the directors who have seen the most success at film festivals.

And finally, we collected the box office earnings of the films that won multiple awards and ranked them.

Note: box office earnings were unavailable for The Cloud in Her Room.