Numerous Oscar trophies, a star on the “Walk of Fame” in Hollywood, and an award for his life’s work on the sidelines of the Berlinale 2019: The Swiss film producer Arthur Cohn also became a legend in Hollywood with his productions.
He has now died in Jerusalem at the age of 98, as close friends report, citing his family. A few years ago, Cohn moved from Basel to live with his son in Israel. Before that, he worked in Basel for decades. According to his son, he was still working on a new film project last year.
Funeral to be streamed live
He died there, as the editor-in-chief of the Jewish magazine Tachles, Yves Kugelmann, told dpa after a conversation with Cohn’s relatives. Kugelmann was still in Jerusalem at the beginning of the week, as he reported, but was no longer able to meet Cohn in person.
A long-time employee of Cohn, Pierre Rothschild, sent a death notice by email, which is also available to the dpa. He told dpa that he had spoken to Cohn’s family himself. The announcement of Cohn’s death read: “A man of vision and creativity, full of living goodness, a keeper of Zion.” According to this information, the funeral will take place on Saturday evening and will be streamed live on a YouTube channel.
Last year, Arthur Cohn was still working on the film adaptation of Fred Uhlman’s novel “The Friend Found Again.” According to his son Emanuel, who is an actor, he had largely completed the script in 2022. In May 2025, three months after his father’s 98th birthday, Emanuel Cohn told the German Press Agency that the project had “stalled somewhat” but was still in progress.
Cohn’s credo was quality over glamour. He was friends with Hollywood stars such as Al Pacino, Michael Douglas and Jodie Foster. Great actresses like Faye Dunaway and Liv Ullmann publicly admired his charm. In his films, however, he usually gave preference to lesser-known actors and directors.
I wish today’s cinema had fewer special effects, sex and violence.
Arthur Cohn
“I have always tried to create human cinema and let myself be guided by the emotionality of the story,” Cohn told the Swiss newspaper “Blick” after the award in Berlin in 2019. “I would like today’s cinema to have fewer special effects, sex and violence, and more humanistic values.”
Cohn valued subtle and poetic material in his films. A prime example is “The Etruscan Smile” (2018), based on a novel by José Luis Sampedro, which was enthusiastically celebrated at the Berlinale. It’s about an oddball Scot who, after living on a remote island, moves to San Francisco to live with his son for health reasons. Although he can’t do much with his modern lifestyle, he still finds joy in life again.
Cohn always kept the reins in his productions from the script to the final cut and usually produced on a small budget. “The Etruscan Smile” cost twelve million dollars. That’s a fraction of what action thrillers cost, which can have budgets of more than $280 million.
Cohn won a total of six Oscars
As a producer, Cohn received Oscar trophies for three documentaries together with other nominees, including in 2000 for “One Day in September” about the attack by a Palestinian terrorist organization on the Israeli team at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. In 1962 he won the award for “Only Heaven and Dirt”. It’s about a former Dutch colony in Southeast Asia. In 1991 he won the Oscar for “American Dream,” about the labor dispute of US factory workers in the 1950s.
Three other films produced by Cohn were crowned with Oscars as best foreign language films: the Italian-German film drama “The Garden of Finzi Contini” (1972), the anti-war film “Longing for Africa” (1977) and the chess drama “Dangerous Moves” (1985). According to Oscar rules, these trophies do not go to the producer, but to the film as a whole and the country that submits it.
Cohn was pleased about the renaissance of documentary films. “You want to get away from this “fake” and go back to the real world, to real human stories,” he told the Swiss “Tages-Anzeiger” in 2018. “That’s why my advice to young people, especially documentary filmmakers, is: Get away from computers and tablets! Open your eyes, listen to people, record stories!”
Cohn’s mother grew up on Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, married a Swiss lawyer and therefore moved to Basel, where Cohn was born. He studied international law and then worked as a radio journalist for years before ending up in the film business by producing scripts.
Cohn has always kept his personal life private. He considered his films as his legacy. His son Emanuel was an actor in the film “The Etruscan Smile” and his daughter Nurith was the musical director.