Palme d’Or winner Michael Haneke will be presented with the Filmfest München’s CineMerit Award 2009 for his services to cinema as an art form.

The presentation on July 3 will be accompanied by the German premiere of the Austrian director’s award-winning The White Ribbon. In addition, the Filmfest is staging a retrospective of five of Haneke’s films from recent years: Funny Games US, Hidden (Cache), Code Inconnu, Wolfzeit and The Piano Teacher.

Festival director Andreas Ströhl congratulated Haneke’s on his triumph in Cannes, but added that the decision to honour the filmmaker with the CineMerit Award had been made “long before Cannes”.

Previous recipients of the CineMerit Award included directors Roman Polanski, William Friedkin and Alan Parker, actor Kevin Kline and, most recently, the actress Julie Christie in 2008.

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