Cowards Bend the Knee (also known as The Blue Hands) is a 2003 film by Guy Maddin. Maddin directed Cowards Bend the Knee while in pre-production on The Saddest Music in the World, shooting entirely on Super-8mm film with a budget of $30,000.

The feature film was initially developed as a series of ten short films, commissioned as part of an installation art project by Toronto art gallery The Power Plant (curated by Philip Monk). Cowards Bend the Knee is the first in Maddin's "autobiographical 'Me Trilogy'" of feature films starring protagonists named "Guy Maddin," the second being Brand Upon the Brain! (2006) and the third My Winnipeg (2007).

Maddin based the film's premise loosely on the story The Hands of Ida and Euripides's play Medea, although Maddin also claims that the film can be viewed as an autobiography (although the events of his life are not being represented so much as the events of his inner life).