Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival to Liliana Cavani

(ANSA) - VENICE, MARCH 27 - The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 80th International Film Festival of the Venice Biennale goes to director Liliana Cavani.

The decision was taken by the Board of Directors of the Biennale, which endorsed the proposal made by the Director of the Exhibition, Alberto Barbera.

Another Career Lion went to Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai.

"I am very happy and grateful to the Venice Biennale for this beautiful surprise," said Cavani, who has participated in the Venice Film Festival since 1965 with Philippe Pétain: Process at Vichy, Lion of San Marco for the documentary.

   Liliana Cavani's other participations in the Mostra delCinema include those with the films Francesco d'Assisi (1966), Galileo (1968), I cannibali (1969),

   Tony Leung Chiu-wai starred in three films Golden Lions in Venice: City of Sorrows (1989) by Hou Hsiao-hsien, Cyclo (1995) by Tran Anh Hung and Lust, Caution (2007) by Ang Lee.

   For the director of the Cinema Sector of the Biennale, Alberto Barbera, "one of the most emblematic protagonists of the new Italian cinema of the sixties, with a work that later spanned over sixty years of the history of entertainment, Liliana Cavani is a versatile artist capable of frequenting television , theater and opera with the same unconventional spirit, and the same intellectual restlessness that made his films famous.His has always been a nonconformist thought, free from ideological preconceptions and free from conditioning of any kind, moved by the urgency of the continuous search for a truth hidden in the most hidden and mysterious parts of the human soul, up to the borders of spirituality".

Tony Leung, says Barbera, "is one of the most charismatic interpreters of contemporary cinema,

whose exceptional career has been able to evolve in parallel with the development of cinema in a transnational and global key.

Established as a star of the Hong Kong pop scene in the 1980s, he is internationally recognized as one of the most significant and versatile actors of his generation, capable of giving life to unforgettable characters in the most varied genres and at all latitudes". (ANSA).