French director Leos Carax is to receive the Locarno Film Festival’s Leopard of Honour (the Pardo d’onore Swisscom) at this year’s festival.

The annual award is given to a contemporary director for his outstanding body of work.

Five of Carax’s films - Boy Meets Girl, Bad Blood, The Lovers on the Bridge, Pola X and his most recent feature Holy Motors which was in competition at Cannes - will be screened during the festival, as well as the 2008 portmanteau film Tokyo!, which he contribued the segment Merde.

Carax will be presented with the award at a ceremony held at the Piazza Grande. The following day he will take part in a Q&A.

Olivier Pere, artistic director of the festival, said he was “greatly honoured to invite one of cinema’s greatest creative to Locarno”.

Previous recipients of the award have invcluded Bernardo Bertolucci, Ken Loach, Jean-Luc Godard, Abbas Kiarostami and, in 2011, Abel Ferrara.

The festival, in its 65th year, will take place between August 1-11.

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