The 79-year-old Australian director and screenwriter Peter Weir will receive the prestigious Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 81st Venice International Film Festival, which will be held from 28 August to 7 September 2024. This was announced by the Venice Biennale, which has adopted the Director of the Festival’s proposal Alberto Barbera. Peter Weir is universally known for having signed works that have entered the collective imagination, such as Picnic at Hanging Rock (The Long Afternoon of Death), The last wave, Witness – The witness, Mosquito Coast, The fleeting moment, The Truman Show And Master & Commander – Challenge at the edge of the sea.
Venice 2024: the statements of Peter Weir and Alberto Barbera
Peter Weir commented on the news as follows:
«The Venice Biennale International Film Festival and its Golden Lion are part of the imagination of our profession. To be recognized for your life’s work as filmmakers is a great honor».
This is Alberto Barbera’s statement:
«With just 13 films made over forty years, Peter Weir has secured his place in the firmament of the great directors of modern cinema. At the end of the Seventies, he established himself as the main author of the rebirth of Australian cinema thanks to two works, The Machines That Destroyed Paris and Picnic at Hanging Rock, the second of which over the years acquired the status of cult film . The international success of his next two films, The Broken Years and The Year of Living Dangerously, 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.
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 that 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 for life, the temptation of physical and cultural isolation, but also the call of adventurous impulses and the instinct of healthy rebellion.
Celebrating the taste for storytelling and innate romanticism, Weir succeeded in strengthening his role in the Hollywood establishment while underlining a rather clear distance with the American film industry. Witness – The Witness, Mosquito Coast, Dead Poets Society, Fearless, The Truman Show and Master & Commander are the main stages of an artistic journey that has managed to maintain its underlying integrity right through to the commercial success of the films made».
