Ethan Hawke, Deauville Talent Award at the 52^nd Deauville American Film Festival

Upholding its tradition of celebrating exceptional artists of cinema, the Deauville Festival honors Ethan Hawke this year with the Deauville Talent Award during the Opening Ceremony of the 52^nd edition.

Actor, screen­writer, direc­tor, and writer, Ethan Hawke has long stood among cin­e­ma’s most dis­tinc­tive and qui­et­ly bril­liant artists. Over near­ly four decades, he has become a mul­ti­fac­eted, crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed artist, earn­ing five Acad­e­my Award nominations—as both an actor and a writer. His most recent Oscar nom­i­na­tion marks his first for Actor in a Lead­ing Role for Blue Moon, his ninth col­lab­o­ra­tion with film­mak­er Richard Lin­klater. In the film, Hawke deliv­ers a career-defin­ing per­for­mance as Lorenz Hart—magnetic, emo­tion­al­ly raw, and deeply human—earning him BAFTA, SAG, Gold­en Globe, Crit­ics Choice and Gotham Award nominations.

Born in Austin, Texas, Ethan Hawke made his first steps in cin­e­ma at four­teen in Explor­ers (1985) before gain­ing wide­spread recog­ni­tion for Dead Poets Soci­ety (1989). He has con­tin­u­al­ly reshaped his screen iden­ti­ty in acclaimed works like Train­ing Day (2001), which earned him his first Oscar nom­i­na­tion, the Before tril­o­gy (1995−2013) for which he received two Oscar nom­i­na­tions for Best Adapt­ed Screen­play, Boy­hood (2014), and First Reformed (2018), earn­ing him over 30 crit­ics prizes—including the rare tri­fec­ta from the New York Film Crit­ics Cir­cle, Los Ange­les Film Crit­ics Asso­ci­a­tion, and Nation­al Soci­ety of Film Crit­ics. His blaz­ing turn in The Good Lord Bird earned him a Peabody, a Gotham Award, and nom­i­na­tions from SAG and the Gold­en Globes.

As a direc­tor, Hawke has craft­ed a per­son­al body of work includ­ing Blaze (2018), Wild­cat (2023), and notable doc­u­men­taries like The Last Movie Stars (2022). He is cur­rent­ly in pro­duc­tion on the sec­ond sea­son of Ster­lin Har­jo’s FX series The Low­down, which he stars in and exec­u­tive pro­duces. Across every genre and for­mat, he remains a fear­less, ever-evolv­ing screen artist.

The trib­ute will take place dur­ing the Open­ing Cer­e­mo­ny on Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 4 and will be fol­lowed by the pre­miere screen­ing of The Weight, direct­ed by Padra­ic McKin­ley, in which Ethan Hawke plays the lead role. The film will be released in the­aters on Sep­tem­ber 16 under the SND ban­ner. Sev­er­al of his icon­ic films will also be screened dur­ing the Fes­ti­val to allow the audi­ence to (re)discover his work. As part of the day’s cel­e­bra­tions, he will unveil a Beach Hut bear­ing his name dur­ing a pub­lic cer­e­mo­ny, coin­cid­ing with the pre­sen­ta­tion of the Deauville Tal­ent Award.