Luca Guadagnino will receive the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award at this year’s Venice Film Festival.
The Italian director, who is premiering his seven-hour Bernardo Bertolucci documentary “Joie de Vivre” at this year’s festival, is being honored as “a personality who has made a particularly original contribution to the contemporary film industry,” according to a press release. Guadagnino will be presented the award in a ceremony on Sept. 8 before the premiere of “Joie de Vivre.”
“It might seem like a rhetorical gesture to say I am honored to receive the Glory to the Filmmaker award, but it is the plain truth for many reasons,” Guadagnino said in a statement. “To be honored for one’s craft or life as a filmmaker is an ambition that no one who makes films could ever presume to imagine achieving — especially by joining a group of filmmakers who have received this prestigious honor before me and to whom I owe so much of my development. So, I want to emphasize once again what an honor it is to receive this award, especially from Alberto Barbera and La Biennale di Venezia. Thank you, thank you!”
Added Barbera: “The Glory to the Filmmaker Award celebrates in Luca Guadagnino an author who has managed to transform his curiosity into a form of creative freedom. Defying alignment with any single school or movement, he has established himself as a global director, capable of working with leading international actors and producers. He has navigated diverse genres — from melodrama to horror, coming-of-age to psychological thriller — while maintaining a consistent and recognizable voice, without ever losing a deeply Italian identity in portraying bodies, settings and history. His is a vital cinema that does not shy away from risk: nomadic, sensual, sophisticated yet widely accessible, where intellectual provocation and emotion, memory and modernity coexist brilliantly. Glory to the Filmmaker honors the originality of a vision that has succeeded in renewing the language of contemporary cinema, celebrating a career that has brought Italian auteurship into a true dialogue with the entire world.”
Guadagnino is no stranger to Venice Film Festival, and most recently presented his film “After the Hunt,” starring Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield, at last year’s edition. His other credits include “Challengers,” “Bones and All” and “Call Me by Your Name,” and he recently wrapped “Artificial,” a drama about OpenAI founder Sam Altman (played by Garfield) that was dropped by Amazon MGM after they struck a deal with the tech company. The film was then picked up by Neon, which is planning a campaign for the upcoming awards season.
