Berlin: Geoffrey Rush to Receive Camera Honor

Oscar-winning Australian actor Geoffrey Rush will be honored at the Berlin Film Festival this year with the Berlinale Camera award, a prize given to people who have had a major impact on film culture or the film industry.

The acclaimed actor, famous for his roles in The King’s Speech, The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and Shine (for which he won the Oscar in 1997), stars in Stanley Tucci’s Final Portrait, which is screening out of competition in Berlin this year. Rush will receive his Berlinale Camera trophy at a ceremony in Berlin on Feb. 11.

The Berlin Film Festival also will honor Egyptian film critic Samir Farid and Chinese producer-distributor Nansun Shi with a Berlinale Camera award this year.

Farid is one of the most esteemed film critics in the Arab world and has received lifetime honors for this contribution to film criticism from the festivals at Cannes, Dubai and the Osian-Cinefan festival in New Delhi.

Shi is one of the biggest names in Chinese cinema. With her production company Film Workshop, which she runs with Chinese director Tsui Hark, she has produced such films as the Infernal Affairs trilogy, the first of which was adapted as Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning The Departed, as well as local box-office hits Once Upon a Time in China, Seven Swords and The Taking of Tiger Mountain. She is a co-founder of Chinese distribution firm Distribution Workshop and served as vice chairman of leading film studio Media Asia Group.

Shi has been to Berlin with her films several times, including with Kim Tae-Yong’s Late Autumn in 2011 and Hark’s Flying Swords of Dragon Gate in 2012.

Shi will receive the Berlinale Camera on Feb. 10; Samir Farid on Feb.15.