Zurich Festival Retrospective For ‘Cloud Atlas’ Director Tom Tykwer

BERLIN– The Zurich Film Festival will honor German director Tom Tykwer will a retrospective of his work.

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Tykwer’s latest, Cloud Atlas, which he wrote, directed and produced together with Andy and Lana Wachowski, has its worldwide premiere at the Toronto Film Festival next month. The ambitious novel adaptation features an all-star cast including Tom Hanks, Halle Barry, Susan Sarandon and Hugh Grant.

Alongside his many award-winning films - including Run Lola Run, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer and Three – Tykwer has been an active producer of other directors’ work through his Berlin-based X Filme Creative Pool production shingle. He has produced such acclaimed German-language features as Sebastian Schipper’s Gigantic (1999) and Mennan Yapo’s thriller Soundless (2004).

The director combined his passion for filmmaking with humanitarian aims with his not-for-profit project One Fine Day, a group that promotes artistic education in the slums of Nairobi. With an extension of this project – One Fine Day Films – Tykwer is involved in helping young African filmmakers develop and produce their own features. The first film made under the scheme – Soul Boy – had its premiere at the Gothenburg International Film Festival in 2010.

Zurich has previously honored such filmmakers as Paul Haggis, Roman Polanski and Milos Forman with its festival retrospectives.

The Swiss event is only in its 8th year but is quickly becoming a highlight on the festival calendar. The 2012 Zurich Festival, which runs Sept. 20-30, will feature such A-list VIPs as Richard Gere, John Travolta, Oliver Stone and Ocean’s Eleven producer Jerry Weintraub.