Ian Young
Cultural Reporter
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Award-winning Belgian actress Emily Dequeenne passed away from cancer at the age of 43.
Dequeenne rose to fame when she won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival at the 18-year-old for the film Rosetta.
She won another Cannes award for Perdrela Raison (Our Children) in 2012 and received Cesar, one of the top French film honors.
She appeared mostly in French films, but also appeared as police officer Laurence Relaud in the 2014 BBC TV drama The Missing.
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Directed by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Rosetta won Top Cannes honor in 1999 The Palme D’Or
Rosetta was a moving story about the teenager’s struggle to overcome a miserable life, and was Dequeenne’s first screen role.
She was unemployed after losing her job in a food factory when she was chosen for the role.
“On the first day she filmed in front of a real camera, she was able to bring the whole team together,” Luc Dardenne, who directed alongside his brother Jean-Pierre, said in a homage to broadcaster RTBF.
“It got better and better as the film progresses… she’s epic and the film puts a huge burden on her.”
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Dequenne returned to the Cannes Red Carpet at last year’s film festival
Missing, she played Laurence Relaud and starred James Nesbitt as the father of a boy who disappears during his family vacation.
Her other films include La Fille Du Rer (The Girl on the Train), the 2014 PAS Son genre (not my type), and Close for Cannes candidates in 2022.
Others who paid tribute include French Minister of Culture Rakida Dati, who wrote, “The French cinema has lost a talented actress who still offered so much.”
Dequenne revealed in October 2023 that she was suffering from adrenal cortical carcinoma (ACC), an adrenal cancer.
In one of her last Instagram posts, for World Cancer Day in February, she wrote:
