The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 81st Venice International Film Festival was awarded to Peter Weir, Australian director and screenwriter (Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show, Master & Commander).
The decision was made by the Board of Directors of the Biennale, which adopted the proposal of the Director of the Exhibition, Alberto Barbera.
“The Venice Film Festival and its Golden Lion are part of the imaginary of our profession – declared Weir, in accepting the proposal -. Being rewarded for the work of a lifetime as directors is a great honor” .
“With just 13 films made over a period of forty years – comments Barbera – Peter Weir secured a place in the firmament of the great directors of modern cinema. By the end of the Seventies he had established himself as the main author of the rebirth of cinema Australian by virtue of two works, The Machines That Destroyed Paris and Picnic at Hanging Rock, the second of which will acquire the status of cult film over the years. The international success of the following two films, The Broken Years and The Year of Living Dangerously, they opened the doors of Hollywood cinema to him, of which he quickly became one of the main protagonists, an advocate of a cinema capable of combining reflection on personal themes and the need to address the widest possible audience”. According to the director of the Festival, “despite the diversity of the subjects addressed, it is not difficult to find in his cinema, which is both audacious, rigorous and spectacular, the constant of a sensitivity which allows him to deal with eminently modern themes, such as the fascination for nature and its mysteries, the crisis of adults in consumerist societies, the difficulties of educating young people in life, the temptation of physical and cultural isolation, but also the call of adventurous impulses and the instinct of healthy rebellion. Celebrating the taste of storytelling and innate romanticism, Weir succeeded in strengthening his role in the Hollywood establishment while highlighting a rather clear distance with the American film industry – Witness, Mosquito Coast, Dead Poets Society, Fearless. Without fear, The Truman Show and Master & Commander are the main stages of an artistic journey – he concludes – which has managed to maintain its underlying integrity right through to the commercial success of the films made”.
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