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French actress and producer Isabelle Huppert, 71, will be honored with the Lumière Award at the 16e edition of the Lyon International Cinema Festival, which will be held from October 12 to 20, 2024.
Since its creation in 2009, the Lumière festival has become one of the major festivals of international cinema. The 2024 Lumière prize will be awarded to Isabelle Huppert. The first to receive the award was American actor and director Clint Eastwood, now 94 years old.
“Isabelle Huppert is one of the most famous and celebrated French actresses in the world,” organizers said in a statement. “His career embraces an immense part of the history of contemporary cinema.”
Favorite actress of Claude Chabrol, who directed her seven times, Isabelle Huppert won the Best Actress Prize at Cannes in 1978 at the age of 25 for her role in Violette Noziere, marking his first collaboration with the French director. She was also crowned in Venice for two other of their films, A women’s affair (1988) et Ceremony (1995). His second acting prize at Cannes came for The Pianist by Michael Haneke in 2001. In 2009, she chaired the jury of the same festival.
“Capable of going from a sophisticated comedy to a demanding auteur film”, the actress has worked with many big names in French and European cinema such as Jean-Luc Godard, Claire Denis, Bertrand Tavernier, Diane Kurys, Maurice Pialat, Catherine Breillat, François Ozon, André Téchiné and Andrzej Wajda.
Her insatiable curiosity and taste for unique experiences also led her to the United States, where she starred in the legendary The Gate of Heaven (1980) by Michael Cimino, as well as in the Philippines and South Korea under the direction of Brillante Mendoza and Hong Sang-soo. Double César winner as Best Actress for Ceremony et Elle by Paul Verhoeven (2017), the latter film also earned him a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.
With this Lumière prize, she succeeds German director Wim Wenders, winner in 2023. Two other actresses preceded her: Jane Fonda in 2018 and Catherine Deneuve in 2016.
“It’s a magnificent prize, just like its festival. And it’s a prize that bears the name of the inventors of cinema! Receiving it is a joy and a source of pride,” the actress told festival organizers. Created by Thierry Frémaux, director general of the Lumière Institute and general delegate of the Cannes Film Festival, this prize celebrates “a cinema personality for their entire body of work and the connection they have with the history of cinema.”
With AFP
