Bernardo Bertolucci to Present Marco Bellocchio With Venice Festival Award

ROME -- Italian director Marco Bellocchio, slated to receive the Venice Film Festival's prestigious Golden Lion for lifetime achievement prize, will receive the award from fellow director Bernardo Bertolucci, Venice officials announced Monday.
 
The prize will be awarded in a special ceremony Sept. 9 in the newly restored Sala Grande at the Palazzo del Cinema, along with a special screening of the 12-minute homage to Bellocchio made by director Pietro Marcello: Marco Bellocchio, Venezia 2011. The festival will also present the world premiere of a special director's cut of Bellocchio's 1971 classic Nel nome del padre (In the Name of the Father) that same evening.
 
"I am honored and moved by the fact Bernardo Bertolucci will award me the Lion," Bellocchio said in a statement released by the festival. "Even though we have followed different paths, there have always been mutual interest, esteem and affection between us."
 
Bertolucci is no stranger to the Golden Lion prize: Venice awarded him its lifetime achievement honor in 2007.
 

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