Ethan Coen

Ethan Coen directed almost everything he has made together with his elder brother Joel, and for many years the two were named as one, Joel and Ethan Coen; in the 2020s they began directing apart. A Serious Man and Inside Llewyn Davis are two muted tragicomedies set in the sixties, and in each of them trial after trial is piled on the protagonist, the load in A Serious Man coming to resemble Job's. Burn After Reading is a spy story leaning into dark comedy in which nobody quite knows what anyone else is doing. On the road from cult independent cinema to more than one Academy Award the pair stayed like themselves, and behind that lies a writing that moves between genres and feeds on a knowledge of cinema. Film Independent cited him seven times, five of those alongside Joel: Blood Simple was up for best feature and best screenplay in 1986, Fargo won both in 1997, A Serious Man was nominated for directing in 2010 and took the Robert Altman Award at that same ceremony, shared with Joel, and Inside Llewyn Davis was nominated for best feature in 2014.