The Venice Film Festival has set filmmaker Liliana Cavani and actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai to receive this year’s Golden Lions for lifetime achievement. The 80th Venice fest runs from August 30-September 9 on the Lido.
Cavani, whose credits include 1974 classic The Night Porter, starring Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling, and 1985’s The Berlin Affair, has had several films at the festival, beginning with 1965’s Philippe Pétain: Processo a Vichy, which won the Lion of San Marco for best documentary. It was followed by Francesco d’Assisi (1966), Galileo (1968), I cannibali (1970), Dove siete? Io sono qui (1993) — for which Anna Bonaiuto won the Coppa Volpi for best actress — Ripley’s Game with John Malkovich (2002) and Clarisse (2012).
As for Leung, whose credits include Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, Zhang Yimou’s Hero, Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs and recent Marvel title Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, he also has the distinction of having starred in three films which have won the top prize Golden Lion at Venice. They are: A City of Sadness (1989) by Hou Hsiao-hsien, Cyclo (1995) by Tran Anh Hung and Lust, Caution (2007) by Ang Lee.
Speaking of Cavani, Festival Director Alberto Barbera commented, “One of the most emblematic protagonists of the New Italian Cinema of the 1960s, whose work has spanned over sixty years of show business history, Liliana Cavani is a versatile artist who frequents television, theater and opera with the same unconventional spirit and intellectual ferment that have made her movies famous… Her mindset has always been nonconformist, free of ideological preconceptions, and decoupled from any type of brainwashing; it is driven by the constant search for a truth concealed in the most recessed and mysterious corners of the human soul, up to the edge of spirituality. The characters in her movies are set in a historical context that shows an existential tension toward change, young people searching for answers to important questions, complex and problematic characters who reflect the unresolved conflict between individual and society.”
Continued Barbera, “Tony Leung is a charismatic performer in the course of an exceptional transnational career which has evolved paralleling the expansion of global film circulation. Not only have Tony Leung’s roles spanned a great variety of genres, but also have bridged television, popular culture and art-cinema at different latitudes… Recognized as one of the major actors of his generation, while maintaining the incredible versatility that first turned him into a film and pop star in Hong Kong in the 1980s, he has achieved a unique profile as a pan-Asian and global star confirming his presence within ever shifting screen cultures, deconstructing the traditional idea of male stardom and bringing compelling sensitivity to all his roles.”
