Arthur Cohn
Arthur Cohn was a Swiss film producer and a multiple Academy Award winner.
Life and career
Cohn was born to a Jewish family, the son of Marcus Cohn, a lawyer who saved the lives of many Jews from within Switzerland during World War II and leader of the Swiss Zionist movement. Cohn's mother, Rose Cohn-Galewski, was a Jewish-German poet from Berlin. Cohn's grandfather, Arthur Cohn, was the first chief rabbi of Basel. After completing high school in Basel, Cohn became a journalist and a reporter for Swiss Radio, covering the Middle East as well as soccer and ice hockey games. He shifted from journalist writing to script writing, but soon found his passion in film production.Six of his films won the Academy Award, three in the category of Best Foreign Language Film and three in the category of Best Documentary Feature. Cohn was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1992, the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 1995, the Humanitarian Award by the National Board of Review in 2001, the Guardian of Zion Award in 2004, as well as the UNESCO Award in 2005. He was bestowed with multiple honorary degrees including from Boston University, Yeshiva University, the University of Basel, and Bar-Ilan University. Cohn received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Chicago International Film Festival, the Shanghai International Film Festival, as well as from the International Film Festivals in Jerusalem and Haifa.
Cohn divided his time between Basel and Los Angeles and was regarded as a hands-on producer who was strongly involved with the development of the script until the final touches of the editing process. For decades he was assisted by Lillian Birnbaum and Pierre Rothschild. Cohn's films have been shown at many retrospectives around the world.
His best-known fictional film is The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. He also produced films by Kevin Macdonald and Walter Salles.