The Venice Film Festival has announced it will award the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to Australian director and screenwriter Peter Weir at its 81st edition, scheduled to run from August 28th to September 7th.
“The Venice Film Festival and its Golden Lion are part of the folklore of our craft,” said Weir. “To be singled out as a recipient for a lifetime’s work as a director is a considerable honor.”
Festival director Alberto Barbera, who proposed the decision to the la Biennale di Venezia board, stated, “With a total of only 13 movies directed over the course of 40 years, Peter Weir has secured a place in the firmament of the great directors of modern cinema. At the end of the 1970s, he made a name for himself as the main man behind the rebirth of Australian film thanks to two movies, ‘The Cars That Ate Paris’ and ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock,’ the latter of which gained cult film status over the years. The international success of his two next movies, ‘Gallipoli’ and ‘The Year of Living Dangerously,’ opened Hollywood’s doors to him, and he soon became one of its major protagonists. In his films, Weir combines reflections on personal themes with a need to reach as vast an audience as possible. 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 role in the Hollywood establishment while keeping his distance from the American movie industry. ‘Witness,’ ‘Mosquito Coast,’ ‘Dead Poets Society,’ ‘Fearless,’ ‘The Truman Show,’ and ‘Master and Commander’ are the major stages of an artistic career that has conserved its underlying integrity, all the way inside the commercial success of the movies he has made.”
Peter Weir’s final film, “The Way Back,” was released in 2010. While he attempted to make other films, none of them materialized, and rumors started to circulate that he was retired. As the years went on, Weir officially announced his retirement in 2022. That same year, he received an Honorary Academy Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The 81st Venice International Film Festival will run from August 28th-September 7th.
Are you excited for the 2024 Venice Film Festival? Was do you think of this announcement? What’s your favorite Peter Weir film? Are you planning to attend the festival this year? Which films do you think will be announced? Please let us know in the comments section below or on our Twitter account.
