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American filmmaking duo Joel and Ethan Coen will be honoured at the 18th edition of Lyon’s Lumière Festival.
The Oscar-winning brothers will receive the prestigious Lumière Award at the festival, which runs from 10-18 October and is headed by Cannes head Thierry Fremaux.
The Coens will receive their award on 16 October, and their films will be shown in a retrospective.
Best known for their genre-spanding films which include Blood Simple, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country For Old Men, True Grit, Inside Llewyn Davis and Hail, Caesar!, the Coens “stand at the forefront of a generation that revolutionized the art of cinema in the 1990s” – according to the festival’s statement.
It added: “The adjective ‘cult’ seems to have been invented for them. While they have received a Palme d’Or, three Best Director Awards and a Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as four Oscars, it is above all the public’s enthusiasm, the audiences’ attachment to their films, and their impact on contemporary culture that have placed them at the very pinnacle of cinema superstars.”
The “extraordinary storytellers and masterful screenwriters” were praised for “their sense of humor, their style, their command of narrative, the way they use music, as well as the ensemble of actors who surround them.”
The statement also referred to them as “rock stars of their craft – icons of popular culture whose films have left an unforgettable impact.”
The Lumière Award is presented to “a personality of the cinema for his or her entire body of work.”
Last year, Michael Mann was the recipient, and others to receive the award include Isabelle Huppert, Tim Burton, Wim Wenders, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jane Campion, Wong Kar-wai, Pedro Almodóvar, Quentin Tarantino, Jane Fonda and Clint Eastwood.
The 2026 Lumière Festival takes place from 10-18 October in Lyon, France.