Directors of incomparable style and precision, acclaimed discoverers of actors (under their direction, Olivier Gourmet and Émilie Dequenne received Best Actor and Actress awards in Cannes), the Dardenne brothers have put their mark on contemporary cinema with their powerful and immediately-recognizable vision. The poetics of reality are pushed to their pinnacle, a nod to their origin as documentary-filmmakers. Hailing from Belgium, a country extraordinarily active and productive in the history of cinema, they are celebrated on the international scene and admired by their colleagues, winning two Palme d'Or awards while garnering prizes for Best Screenplay, the Grand Prix and Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival. The time has come to celebrate the work of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne for what it is: humanist, bold and committed, turned towards the young generation and true to life.
« We are very honoured to receive this 2020 Lumière Award, declared Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. For us, two directing brothers, this award embodies a special emotion. It connects us to the original brotherhood of cinema, with the two brothers, who filmed, for the first time, the bodies, the faces of men and women, workers leaving their workshops. More than a century later, we film bodies, faces, which are the descendants of those shot by the Lumière brothers, and, each time, we try to film them as if it were the first time. It will be wonderful to receive this Award in the context of the festival, which creates a dialogue, like nowhere else, between world heritage cinema and audiences of today.
Long live the cinema! Long live life! »
The cinema of the Dardennes also encompasses an impressive gallery of actresses and actors, such as Émilie Dequenne (unforgettable Rosetta), Olivier Gourmet, Jérémie Renier, Fabrizio Rongione or Déborah François, whose talents they have unveiled, like Arta Dobroshi (Lorna’s Silence) or the adolescent Idir Ben Addi in Young Ahmed, their latest film. In recent years, the greatest actresses of today - Cécile de France, Marion Cotillard or Adèle Haenel - have come to join the brothers, their cinema, their world. Along with the latter, we also find producers, distributors and technicians; in short, a real family that they have brought together, which Lyon will have the honour of celebrating.
Bertrand Tavernier, President of the Lumière Institute, which organizes the festival, exclaimed, « It is an immense joy to give this Lumière Award to the Dardenne brothers; it is also self-evident in the era we are experiencing. With passion, with a consistency that recalls Orwell, a tremendous empathy for the lame, eschewing all dictates of fashion or box office sales, the films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne explore the lives of those who suffer, as victims of crises, of globalisation, prisoners of religious intolerance, of the "misérables" Hugo was inclined towards, resisting in their own way: violently, awkwardly, tenderly. The two filmmaking brothers do it brilliantly, with talent, with attention to the moral of things, allowing us to discover prodigious actors and proving to us that what we see, especially if it is with this humanity, counts as much as the vision itself. »
Famous for their unequivocal words and humanist positions, renowned for their humour and contagious passion, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne will be in Lyon this October. They will succeed Jane Fonda and Francis Ford Coppola.
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