Alfonso Cuaron to receive lifetime achievement award at Locarno Film Festival

Los Angeles, Jul 17 (PTI) Oscar winner Alfonso Cuaron, known for films such as “Gravity”, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”, “Y tu mama tambien” and “Roma”, will be honoured with the lifetime achievement award at the 77th edition of the Locarno Film Festival.

The film gala is set to commence on August 7 in Switzerland’s Locarno. It will come to a close on August 17.  

Cuaron will receive the award, touted to be a tribute to “film personalities with extraordinary careers”, on August 11.

The event will be held in the Swiss town’s Piazza Grande after audiences can catch a panel conversation with him earlier in the day, according to the festival’s official website.

Giona A Nazzaro, artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival, described Cuaron as a “visionary author of agile and liberated imaginaries”.

“Combining an experimental spirit with the sweep of great popular writers, he has managed to capture the imagination and hearts of millions of viewers, passing on the same wonder that he himself experienced as a child and teenager basking in the glow of classic Mexican cinema.

“From coming-of-age novels to science fiction, from melodrama to grand sagas like ‘Harry Potter’, Alfonso Cuaron has reinvented himself as an artist with each new film, always in the service of the pleasure of cinema, and has thus created a truly multifaceted body of work,” Nazzaro said in a statement.

The filmmaker has won two Academy Awards for the 2013 sci-fi thriller “Gravity” and three for 2018’s “Roma”, his black-and-white semi-autographical take on his upbringing in Mexico City. He earned the best director Academy Award for both the films.

Cuaron’s upcoming project is the Apple TV+ series “Disclaimer”, a seven-part psychological thriller. It stars Cate Blanchett, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Kevin Kline.

Director Jane Campion, Indian superstar Shah Rukh Khan, producer Stacey Sher (“Erin Brockovich”, “Django Unchained”) and Ben Burtt, the man behind the voices of iconic characters R2-D2, E.T. and Wall-E will also be feted at the Locarno Film Festival.