Following the award already announced to Peter Wear, the Biennale announces that the legendary Ripley from Alien will also be awarded for her extraordinary career during the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival.
She entered the history of cinema forcefully by playing the role of Ellen Ripley nell’Alien by Ridley Scott and in the subsequent chapters of the series, but the career of Sigourney Weaver (which debuted in 1977 in Me and Annie Of Woody Allen) certainly does not end in the fight against the xenomorph.
Ghostbusters, A career woman, Gorilla in the fogit’s still Death and the Maidenand more recently Avatar e The master gardener.
In short, after the equally beautiful and deserved one at the great Peter Weirwith whom Weaver worked in the beautiful A Year of Living Dangerouslythe one to the American actress is a very fitting second Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the Venice Film Festival 2024.
Here is Weaver’s statement commenting on the award that the Biennale has decided to give her:
“I am truly honored to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice Biennale. This award is a privilege that I share with all the directors and collaborators I have worked with over the years. I proudly accept this recognition, which also celebrates all those who helped bring these films to life.”
This, instead, is the comment of the director of the Film Festival Alberto Barbera:
“There are few rivals for an actress of Sigourney Weaver’s caliber. With a strong theatrical background, she won over the general cinema audience with Ridley Scott’s Alien, quickly becoming an emblematic figure of the 80s, during which she coined the image of an unprecedented heroine for the action genre, capable of successfully holding her own against the male models who until then had dominated epic and adventure cinema. Not content with having paved the way for numerous other imitators, the actress continued in her incessant search for her own identity that was constantly called into question, through choices that range from genre films to comedies, from auteur films to children’s films, escaping the labels that would have wanted her confined to the victorious icon of the Reagan era. In the role of an authentic collaborator rather than a simple tool to be shaped by the hands of a director, she contributed to the success of the films of James Cameron, Paul Schrader, Peter Weir, Michael Apted, Roman Polanski, Ivan Reitman, Mike Nichols, Ang Lee and many others, managing each time to impress on her charismatic presence the indelible mark of a complex, sometimes contradictory, always authentic figure. Gifted with a great temperament, capable of moving delicately but without fragility, she imposed the image of a confident and determined woman, dynamic and tenacious, not without letting a feminine sensitivity of intense magnetism shine through, with ever-changing nuances. The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement is the deserved recognition of a star who has been able to build bridges between the most sophisticated auteur cinema and films that dialogue with the public in a frank and original way, without ever giving up being herself”.
