# Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Screenplay

The Best Screenplay Award (French: Prix du scénario) is an award presented by the Jury to the best screenwriter for their work on a film of the Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival.
It was first awarded to Alfred L. Werker, Eugene Ling & Virginia Shaler for Lost Boundaries (1949).
Winners Denys Arcand for The Barbarian Invasions (2003), Ryusuke Hamaguchi & Takamasa Oe for Drive My Car (2021) and Coralie Fargeat for The Substance were later nominated Academy Awards for their Screenplays.

## Winners
### 1940s

| Year | Screenwriter(s) | English Title | Ref. |
| 1949 | Alfred L. Werker, Eugene Ling & Virginia Shaler | Lost Boundaries |

### 1950s

| Year | Screenwriter(s) | English Title |
| 1951 | Terence Rattigan | The Browning Version |
| 1952 | Piero Tellini | Cops and Robbers |
| 1958 | Pier Paolo Pasolini, Massimo Franciosa & Pasquale Festa Campanile | Young Husbands |

### 1960s

| Year | Screenwriter(s) | English Title |
| 1963 | Dumitru Carabat, Henri Colpi & Yves Jamiaque | Codine |
| 1965 | Ray Rigby | The Hill |
| 1965 | Pierre Schoendoerffer | The 317th Platoon |
| 1967 | Alain Jessua | The Killing Game |
| 1967 | Elio Petri | We Still Kill the Old Way |

### 1970s

| Year | Screenwriter(s) | English Title | Ref. |
| 1974 | Steven Spielberg, Hal Barwood & Matthew Robbins | The Sugarland Express |

### 1980s

| Year | Screenwriter(s) | English Title |
| 1980 | Furio Scarpelli, Agenore Incrocci & Ettore Scola | La Terrazza |
| 1981 | István Szabó | Mephisto |
| 1982 | Jerzy Skolimowski | Moonlighting |
| 1984 | Thanassis Valtinos, Theo Angelopoulos & Tonino Guerra | Voyage to Cythera |

### 1990s

| Year | Screenwriter(s) | English Title |
| 1994 | Michel Blanc | Grosse fatigue |
| 1996 | Jacques Audiard & Alain Le Henry | A Self Made Hero |
| 1997 | James Schamus | The Ice Storm |
| 1998 | Hal Hartley | Henry Fool |
| 1999 | Yuri Arabov | Moloch |

### 2000s

| Year | Screenwriter(s) | English Title |
| 2000 | James Flamberg & John C. Richards | Nurse Betty |
| 2001 | Danis Tanović | No Man's Land |
| 2002 | Paul Laverty | Sweet Sixteen |
| 2003 | Denys Arcand | The Barbarian Invasions |
| 2004 | Agnès Jaoui & Jean-Pierre Bacri | Look at Me |
| 2005 | Guillermo Arriaga | The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada |
| 2006 | Pedro Almodóvar | Volver |
| 2007 | Fatih Akin | The Edge of Heaven |
| 2008 | Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne | Lorna's Silence |
| 2009 | Mei Feng | Spring Fever |

### 2010s

| Year | Screenwriter(s) | English Title |
| 2010 | Lee Chang-dong | Poetry |
| 2011 | Joseph Cedar | Footnote |
| 2012 | Cristian Mungiu & Tatiana Niculescu Bran | Beyond the Hills |
| 2013 | Jia Zhangke | A Touch of Sin |
| 2014 | Andrey Zvyagintsev & Oleg Negin | Leviathan |
| 2015 | Michel Franco | Chronic |
| 2016 | Asghar Farhadi | The Salesman |
| 2017 | Yorgos Lanthimos & Efthymis Filippou | The Killing of a Sacred Deer |
| 2017 | Lynne Ramsay | You Were Never Really Here |
| 2018 | Jafar Panahi & Nader Saeivar | 3 Faces |
| 2018 | Alice Rohrwacher | Happy as Lazzaro |
| 2019 | Céline Sciamma | Portrait of a Lady on Fire |

### 2020s

| Year | Screenwriter(s) | English Title |
| 2021 | Ryusuke Hamaguchi & Takamasa Oe | Drive My Car |
| 2022 | Tarik Saleh | Boy from Heaven |
| 2023 | Yuji Sakamoto | Monster |
| 2024 | Coralie Fargeat | The Substance |