Kate Winslet at the presentation of her Golden Eye Award in Zurich.
Keystone / Til Buergy
British actress Kate Winslet presented her new film “Lee” at the Zurich Film Festival (ZFF) and received a Golden Eye Award on Monday evening. She also got closer to the audience by shaking a few hands, signing autographs and taking selfies.
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October 9, 2024 – 09:30
The visit of the Oscar-winning actress is “one of the highlights of the 20-year history of the ZFF,” enthused festival director Christian Jungen in his eulogy on Monday evening at the Congress Center. In the afternoon, she dove into Lake Zurich in 15 degree water.
Film about a war photographer
As she held the Golden Eye Lifetime Achievement Award, the 49-year-old movie star got serious. Indeed, she had in her luggage the most important film of her career, according to her: a biopic on the American war photographer Lee Miller (1907-1977), who was always considered a former model, while she documented the liberation of the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps.
Producer and lead actress, Kate Winslet invested approximately ten years in this project. Lee Miller’s son, Anthony Penrose, was also in attendance. His story is also unique, as he only learned after his mother’s death what she had accomplished during World War II.
Since her disappearance, he wanted to film her story (he himself published it in book form with The Lives of Lee Miller). Before meeting Kate Winslet, he had rejected countless proposals over the years.
