Anecdotes

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 Je pense à vous (1993). Cotillard was cast in Deux jours, une nuit (2014) after meeting the brothers on the set of De rouille et d'os (2012), which was co-produced by them. The original plan was to work together in La fille inconnue (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 Deux jours, une nuit (2014).

As of 2022, 9 of his films have competed for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival: Rosetta (1999), Le Fils (2002), L'enfant (2005), Le silence de Lorna (2008), Le Gamin au vélo (2011), Deux jours, une nuit (2014), La fille inconnue (2016), Le jeune Ahmed (2019), and Tori et 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.

Darren Aronofsky is a fan of the Dardenne brothers and referred to them as "my heroes" in a post in his official Twitter account in 2014, after he attended the premiere of their film Deux jours, une nuit (2014) at the New York Film Festival and posed for a photo next to them. And while promoting Black Swan (2010) in 2010, Aronofsky told Alistair Harkness from The Scotsman that he changed his entire directing style for The Wrestler (2008) after seeing their work for the first time.

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.

Four of his films have been chosen to represent Belgium for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film: Rosetta (1999), Le Fils (2002), L'enfant (2005) and Deux jours, une nuit (2014), but none of them have been nominated. The only one that got an Oscar nomination is Deux jours, une nuit (2014), which was nominated for Best Actress.

Interviewed in "World Directors in Dialogue" by Bert Cardullo (Scarecrow Press, 2011).

Brother of Luc Dardenne