JAEGER-LECOULTRE Glory Award for filmmaker Naderi
Iranian filmmaker Amir Naderi (Vegas, Manhattan by Numbers, Davandeh-The Runner) will be bestowed the Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker award of the 73rd Venice International Film Festival.
Naderi will be awarded the prize in a ceremony to be held on September 5 in the Sala Grande (Palazzo del Cinema), before the Out of Competition screening of his new film Monte, in its world premiere showing in Venice. The film (shot on location in Italy in the mountains of the Alto Adige and Friuli regions) is set in the year 1350 and tells the dramatic story of a man who makes every attempt to bring the sunlight into his village, where his family is barely able to survive because of the prevailing darkness.
Alberto Barbera, director of the Venice Film Festival, recently stated: “Amir Naderi gave fundamental impetus to the birth of the New Iranian Cinema during the 1970s and ‘80s with a number of masterpieces destined to leave their mark on the history of cinema, such as Davandeh (The Runner, 1985) and Ab, bâd, khâk (Water, Wind, Dust, 1988). But even after moving to New York in 1988, Naderi remained stubbornly true to himself and to a type of cinema dedicated to research and experimentation, which refuses to bow to trends and easy shortcuts. The Jaeger-LeCoultre Award is a well-deserved recognition, a tribute to the originality and greatness of a filmmaker who stands out from the crowd, the talent of a passionate director, and the generosity of a man who seems to know no limits.”
Since the 1970s, Amir Naderi (Abadan, 1945) has been among the most influential figures of New Iranian Cinema. He entered the international spotlight with cinema classics such as Tangsir(1974), Entezar (1974), awarded the Jury Prize at the Cannes children’s film festival, The Runner (1985) and Ab, Bad, Khak (1989), which both won the Golden Montgolfiere at Three Continents Festival in Nantes. The first prominent Iranian director to move abroad in the mid ’80s, Naderi’s American films have uniquely captured the vanishing texture of New York. Sound Barrier (2005) won the Roberto Rossellini Critics’ Prize at the Rome Film Festival. Vegas: Based on a True Story, premiered In Competition at Venice in 2008. Cut was shot in Japan and premiered as the Opening Film of the Orizzonti section at Venice in 2011, later winning the 21stJapan Professional Film Awards for Best Director and Best Actor. Naderi’s work has been the subject of retrospectives at museums and film festivals around the world. He has served on international juries such as Jury President for the Competition section of Tokyo FILMeX in 2011 and the Orizzonti section of Venice in 2012.
Jaeger-LeCoultre is a sponsor of the Venice International Film Festival for the twelfth year in a row, and of the Glory to the Filmmaker prize for the tenth. The prize has been awarded in past years to Takeshi Kitano (2007), Abbas Kiarostami (2008), Agnès Varda (2008), Sylvester Stallone (2009), Mani Ratnam (2010), Al Pacino (2011), Spike Lee (2012), Ettore Scola (2013), James Franco (2014), and Brian De Palma (2015).
