Australian director and screenwriter
Peter Weir will be awarded a Lifetime Achievement Golden Lion at
the 81st Venice International Film Festival, which takes place
from August 28 to September 7, the world's oldest cinema
festival said on Thursday.
"The Venice International Film Festival and its Golden Lion for
Lifetime Achievement are part of the folklore of our craft,"
said Weir, whose films include Dead Poets Society and The Truman
Show, both of which premiered in Venice.
"To be singled out as a recipient for a lifetime's work as a
director is a considerable honour."
The decision to award the prize to the 79-year-old was made by
the board of the Venice Biennale after Festival Director Alberto
Barbera proposed it.
"In his films, Weir combines reflections on personal themes and
a need to reach as vast an audience as possible," said Barbera.
"Despite the diversity of the topics he addresses, it is not
difficult to discover a constant in his daring, rigorous, and
spectacular film opus: a sensitivity that allows him to deal
with highly up-to-date topics, such as a fascination with nature
and its mysteries, the crisis of adults in consumerist
societies, the difficulties of educating young people about
life, the temptation of physical and cultural isolation, but
also the lure of adventurous impulses and the instinct for
rebellion...
"Celebrating a taste for storytelling and innate romanticism,
Weir has reinforced his own role in the Hollywood establishment,
all the while keeping his distance from the American movie
industry".
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