Donald Sutherland will receive a lifetime achievement Donostia Award at this year’s 67th edition of the San Sebastian International Film Festival, running Sept. 20-28 in the Spanish city.
The festival will also host a special screening Sept. 26 immediately following the award of the Giuseppe Capotondi-directed, Italy-set neo-noir thriller The Burnt Orange Heresy, in which Sutherland stars alongside Elizabeth Debicki, Claes Bang and Mick Jagger.
The Burnt Orange Heresy has its world premiere as the closing night film of the Venice Film Festival on Sunday, Sept. 7.
The Canada-born Sutherland has worked steadily and across genres in film and television for over half a century, from titles like M.A.S.H., Klute, Novecento and Ordinary People in the 1970s and 1980s to JFK, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and A Time to Kill in the 1990s.
He won an Emmy and a Golden Globe as a supporting actor in the HBO film Citizen X in 1995, and a Golden Globe for his work in 2002’s Path to War. He is known to younger audiences for his role as the villainous dictator President Snow in The Hunger Games series.
In 2017, Sutherland received an Honorary Academy Award for his life’s work. Recently he has been filming Susanne Bier’s miniseries The Undoing with Nicole Kidman
San Sebastian’s Donostia award was created in 1986 to recognize outstanding contributions to world cinema.
In addition to Sutherland, Spanish actress Penelope Cruz, who is gracing the 2019 festival poster, and Greek-born political filmmaker Costa-Gavras will also receive Donostia honors in San Sebastian this year. Cruz will receive her award following the screening of Olivier Assayas’ Wasp Network, in which she stars alongside Edgar Ramírez, Wagner Moura, Gael García Bernal and Ana de Armas. In honor of Costa-Gavras, San Sebastian will screen his latest, Adults in the Room, about the Greek financial crisis.
Last year’s Donostia honorees were actors Judi Dench and Danny DeVito, and Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda.
