Director David Cronenberg will be honored by the Venice Film Festival with its Golden Lion for lifetime achievement.
The Canadian horror auteur, known for a wide range of edgy films such as “Videodrome,” “Dead Ringers,” “A History of Violence,” “Cosmopolis,” and “Maps to the Stars,” was last on the Lido in 2011 with psychological thriller “A Dangerous Mind.”
In a statement, Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera praised Cronenberg for managing to venture beyond the constraints of the horror genre from the start of his career and having “shown that he wants to take his audiences well beyond the cinema of exploitation.”
Cronenberg, who is 75, said: “I’ve always loved the Golden Lion of Venice. A lion that flies on golden wings – that’s the essence of art, isn’t it? The essence of cinema. It will be almost unbearably thrilling to receive a Golden Lion of my own.”
Over the course of a long career which has seen him become an influential cult figure and a festival circuit darling, Cronenberg won the Cannes Jury Special Prize in 1996 for “Crash” and the Berlin Silver Bear in 1999 for “eXistenZ,” among other awards. His films have been nominated for seven Golden Globes. In 1999 Cronenberg presided over the Cannes Film Festival jury, and in 2006, Cannes awarded him its own lifetime achievement award, the Carrosse d’Or.
The upcoming 75th edition of the Venice fest will run Aug. 29 to Sept. 8.
