Joel and Ethan Coen, Palme d’or laureates, to Chair of the 68th Edition of the Cannes Film Festival

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Category: Entertainment News

Published on Tuesday, 20 January 2015 08:39

Written by Janet Walker

Joel and Ethan Coen, American Filmmakers have accepted the invitation from President Pierre Lescure and General Delegate Thierry Frémaux to become for the first time in the history of the Festival de Cannes the Presidents of the 68th edition of the Festival.

"We look forward to returning to Cannes this year", Joel and Ethan Coen said from the Hail Caesar! film shoot with George Clooney, Christophe Lambert, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Josh Brolin and Channing Tatum. "We welcome as always the opportunity to watch movies there from all over the world. Cannes is a festival that has been important to us since the very beginning of our career. Presiding over the Jury is a special honour, since we have never heretofore been president of anything. We will issue further proclamations at the appropriate time." 

2015 is the celebration of 120 years since the invention of the Lumière cinematograph, and the Festival de Cannes will be pleased to recognise, through the Coens, the work of all "cinema brothers" who, since Louis and Auguste Lumière, have enriched its history. The Festival has also had the opportunity to welcome "brothers" in a great way: like Joel and Ethan Coen who won the Palme d'or in 1991, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani received it in 1976, as well as Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne in 1998 and in 2005.

The Festival de Cannes will take place from Wednesday 13 until Sunday 24 May 2015. The composition of the Official Selection and the members of the Jury will be unveiled in mid-April.

Joel and Ethan Coen, Palme d'or laureates in 1991, the Coen brothers are part of the Festival's history. Since Raising Arizona (1987), their second film, they have been invited into the Official Selection and have presented nine of their films, often winning the most prestigious prizes: the Palme d'or in 1991 for Barton Fink; the Award for Best Director in 1996 for Fargo as well as for The Man Who Wasn't There in 2001. And in 2013, Inside Llewyn Davis won the Grand Prix, from Steven Spielberg.

From New York, where Joel studied film, the Coen brothers have become the embodiment of independent cinema, and let's not forget that they have collaborated since their first film, Blood Simple in 1984, which won the Grand Prix at Sundance Film Festival.

After Miller's Crossing and Raising Arizona, both critically acclaimed, it was Barton Fink which brought international recognition. The brothers asserted their talent and originality in films such as Fargo, which was extremely popular with audiences, The Big Lebowski, which has acquired cult status with many film lovers, and O'Brother, Where Art Thou, which gave George Clooney his first big comedy role.

They always work together on films, for which Ethan (himself an author, with a short story collection, Gates of Eden, published in 1998 and newly re-edited in France) is the producer and Joel the director, and since 2004 they have credited themselves together for the script, directing, editing, and production, reinforcing the image of a kind of cinema as personal as it is brotherly.
Ethan and Joel also extend the family spirit to their filming crews and actors they work with regularly: Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Frances McDormand and George Clooney are the actors inspired by the sense of absurdity and offbeat style which runs through their work, masking its radical pessimism.

Their style crosses several highly varied genres which question all the myths of American culture: from madcap comedy to westerns (True Grit, which opened Berlin Film Festival), intellectual charades to film noir, to the literary adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men (2007), which won a number of international prizes and four Oscars.