- Born
- Height6′ 0¾″ (1.85 m)
- After studying drama in the arts institute, Jean Pierre Dardenne and his brother Luc made some videos about the rough life in blue-collar small towns in the Wallonie. After their meeting with filmmaker Armad Gatti and cinematographer Ned Burgess, they decided to enter in the movie business.
In 1978 they shot their first documentary, Le chant du rossignol, about the resistance against the Nazis during the second world war in Belgium. In 1986 they shot their first fiction movie, Falsch, about a Jewish family massacred by the Nazis. After their second movie, Je pense a vous, they released La Promesse, a movie about inmigration in Belgium. The film was a success worldwide winning awards in many festivals.
In 1999 they had another hit with Rosetta, that won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Festival. The movie tells the story of a blue collar worker with an alcoholic mother who tries to have a better life in a small belgium city.
In 2002, they came back to Cannes with their last movie, Le Fils, that won the ecumenical jury prize and the award for best actor for Olivier Gourmet.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Enrique Bocanegra enrique_bocanegra@hotmail.com
- RelativesLuc Dardenne(Sibling)
- Hand-held camera.
- Characters often use bikes or bicycles.
- Stories revolving around poor characters who are struggling to make money.
- Father/son relationships.
- All of his films are set in Seraing, Liege, the Belgian town where him and his brother Luc Dardenne were born and raised.
- Arta Dobroshi, Marion Cotillard and Adèle Haenel are the only non-Belgian actors that he and his brother cast to lead one of their films since I'm Thinking of You (1993). Cotillard was cast in Two Days, One Night (2014) after meeting the brothers on the set of Rust and Bone (2012), which was co-produced by them. The original plan was to work together in The Unknown Girl (2016), which was eventually made years later with Haenel in the lead. Cotillard is the most famous actor that the Dardenne brothers have ever worked with.
- Has directed one Oscar-nominated performance: Marion Cotillard in Two Days, One Night (2014).
- As of 2022, 9 of his films have competed for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival: Rosetta (1999), The Son (2002), The Child (2005), Lorna's Silence (2008), The Kid with a Bike (2011), Two Days, One Night (2014), The Unknown Girl (2016), Young Ahmed (2019), and Tori and Lokita (2022). "Two Days, One Night" was his first film that left the festival empty-handed, despite receiving unanimous acclaim and a 15-minute standing ovation. His follow-up film, "The Unknown Girl", also didn't win any award at the festival. Both films had famous and award-winning French actresses (Marion Cotillard and Adèle Haenel) in lead roles, as opposed to the usual unknown actors from Belgium or other countries that are cast for leading roles in his films.
- Along with his brother Luc, he is one of a select band of directors to have won the Palme d'Or twice at the Cannes Film Festival. The others are Francis Ford Coppola, Alf Sjöberg, Bille August, Emir Kusturica, Ruben Östlund, Shôhei Imamura, Michael Haneke and Ken Loach.
- The truth is always less interesting than the fiction.
- We are not Spielberg. Spielberg is successful, not us. [on himself and his brother Luc]
- [Palme d'Or acceptance speech for Rosetta (1999)] I'll try and be as simple as the film we have made. Thank you for having loved Rosetta. Thank you very much.
- [on Two Days, One Night (2014)] (Luc) wanted to show how this woman, without realizing it, over one weekend, manages to inspire a solidarity that was totally lost in the workplace. In the attempt to save herself, she manages to recreate this important element: solidarity. This is what interested us. Not pointing the finger at who is to blame, whether it's the company, our society or the harsh competitiveness of the working environment.
- [press conference for The Unknown Girl (2016) at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival] There's no secret to co-directing. We're just one person. It's true. It doesn't look like that because there are two physical people, but we're actually just one person, otherwise we couldn't work well together. Because we're two, we can do things differently - one can be in front of the camera and one behind, but we're just one person.
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