French director Claude Lelouch (A man and a woman, Good year, The Beautiful Story) will be honored at this year’s Venice Film Festival with the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award, a prize dedicated to a “personality who has made a particularly original contribution to the contemporary film industry.”
Lelouch will receive the award on Monday, September 2, at the Sala Grande in Venice before the out-of-competition screening of his latest feature film, Eventuallya musical fantasy with Kad Merad (Welcome to the Sticks, The chorus). Elsa Zylberstain, Michel Boujenah, Sandrine Bonnaire, Barbara Pravi and Françoise Gillard are on the bill. The film was produced by Les Films 13 in co-production with France 2 Cinéma and Laurent Dassault Rond-Point. International sales are handled by Metropolitan Filmexport.
“Claude Lelouch is one of the greatest directors of French cinema, an excellent interpreter of its ‘quality’, although foreign to its main currents,” said the artistic director of the Venice Film Festival, Alberto Barbera. “He is also a very prolific filmmaker, having directed more than sixty feature films. A precocious cinephile, author of short films and music videos, director of photography, screenwriter, actor and producer.”
Calling him an “atypical and unclassifiable filmmaker,” Barbera singled out Lelouch’s 1966 feature film A man and a womanwith Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and won two Oscars, for best foreign language film and best original screenplay, for Lelouch and his co-writer Pierre Uytterhoeven.
“Claude Lelouch’s career is like a symphony played throughout his life,” said Cyrille Vigneron, Chairman and CEO of Cartier, the prize’s sponsor. “His filmography spans over sixty-four years, with many award-winning films… Lelouch’s characters are incredibly human, his life stories remain etched in our memories, especially his unwavering obsession with beautiful love stories. What would Love be without Claude Lelouch to express its unwavering power?”
The 81st Venice Film Festival will take place from August 28 to September 7.
