The Leopard of Honour at this year's Locarno International Film Festival (August 6-16) will be awarded to Amos Gitai whose latest film One Day, You Will Understand was shown at this year's Berlinale.

Commenting on the choice of the Israeli filmmaker, artistic director Frederic Maire said in a statement: 'Amos Gitai occupies a very special place in the landscape of contemporary cinema. Deeply rooted in a geography and a history - that of Israel - his work constantly interrogates both past and present, current events and memory, travel and exile, man and his homeland.'

'But above all, every one of his films confronts us with the infinite complexity of reality, whether it be via political documentary, economic treatise, historical or mythological panorama, a story of war or social portrait. A highly prolific filmmaker, Gitai is above all a civic-minded free spirit, for whom film is first of all the expression of a critical look at the world.'

Several of Gitai's films will be shown during the festival to mark the occasion.

Previous recipients of the award include Jacques Rivette, Manoel de Oliveira, Samuel Fuller, Jean-Luc Godard, Bernardo Bertolucci, Joe Dante, Daniel Schmid, Ken Loach, Ermanno Olmi, Terry Gilliam, Abbas Kiarostami, Wim Wenders, Alexander Sokurov and, in 2007, Hou Hsiao-Hsien.

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