Director Jonathan Demme, previously announced as president of the Venice Horizons Jury, will also be feted this year with the Persol Tribute to Visionary Talent Award. The Oscar-winning director, whose latest film Ricki and the Flash is now in cinemas, will be presented with the award Sept. 3.
“Jonathan Demme is part of that generation of cinephile auteurs who revolutionized Hollywood in the Seventies,” said Venice’s director Alberto Barbera. “Colorful, exuberant, straightforward, passionate and intelligent, his cinema moves easily from studio productions to independent, fiction and documentary films, indulging his personal taste for the unexpected, for a shift in tone or genre within each individual film, which has become the original and recognizable hallmark of his style”.
Demme received an Oscar for best director in 1992 for The Silence of the Lambs, which won five Oscars in total, including best picture. He is a veteran of the Lido, having brought multiple films to the world’s oldest film festival, including Melvin and Howard (1980), The Manchurian Candidate (2004), Man from Plains (2007), Rachel Getting Married (2008), I’m Caroline Parker: the Good, the Bad and the Beautiful (2011) and Enzo Avitabile Music Life (2012).
Venice Film Festival takes place Sept. 2-12. Last year, Frances McDormand received the award.
