Wim Wenders will receive the 15th annual Lumiere Award at Lyon’s Lumiere Festival in October, a week-long event celebrating heritage films and modern masters headed by Cannes’ Thierry Fremaux.
The German auteur is fresh off a double feature at May’s Cannes Film Festival with Special Screening 3D portrait of Anselm Kiefer Anselm and Perfect Days that premiered In Competition, scooped a best actor prize for its star Koji Yakusho and sold out worldwide via The Match Factory.
Wenders, an emblematic figure of New German Cinema, is known for a prolific and eclectic slate of films including Palme d’Or-winning Paris, Texas, Venice Golden Lion-winning The State of Things, and Wings of Desire that earned him a best director prize in Cannes in addition to Oscar-nominated documentaries like Buena Vista Social Club, Pina and The Salt of the Earth.
The festival said Wenders was “an obvious choice” and called him “a voyaging director, a multi-faceted virtuoso and visionary, an accomplished photographer who has never ceased to reinvent himself and has lived a thousand lives.
The Lumière Award was launched in 2009 by Frémaux to recognise a leading film industry figure celebrating their complete filmography and key role in the history of cinema. Wenders succeeds 2022’s prize winner Tim Burton and former award recipients including Catherine Deneuve, Jane Campion, Pedro Almodóvar, Jane Fonda, Martin Scorsese, the Dardenne brothers, Wong Kar-wai and Clint Eastwood. The Lumiere award will mark the filmmaker’s first time returning to Lyon since being among the first filmmakers invited by the Lumière Institute in 1991 for a retrospective of his work and photography exhibition. Wenders will be in the French city from October 19-22 and will receive his prize on Friday, October 20.
The Lumiere Festival hosts screenings of new titles and classic films, retrospectives, masterclasses and the International Classic Film market reserved for industry professionals, the only such market in the world dedicated to classic cinema and film rights. The festival’s events are scattered across the city of Lyon, notably the birthplace of the first Cinematograph in 1895.
The 15th Lumiere festival will run from October 14-22, 2023 and the MIFC classic film market from October 17-20.
Wenders will then head off to Tokyo where he is set to preside over the international competition jury of the Tokyo International Film Festival (Oct. 23- Nov. 1) and also host a retrospective of influential Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu.
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