US filmmaker Steven Spielberg is to receive an Honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival, which will devote its Homage section to his films.
The festival, set to run from February 16-26, will also screen his most recent feature, The Fabelmans.
Spielberg previously attended the Berlinale in 1999, where he presented a special screening of The Last Days, a Holocaust documentary on which he was executive producer and that went on to win the Best Documentary Oscar.
The festival previously screened Spielberg’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind as part of its retrospective strand in 1985 and 2017 as well as The Sugarland Express in 2004. His prisoner of war drama Empire Of The Sun played out of competition at the festival in 1988.
“With an incredible career, Steven Spielberg has not only enchanted generations of viewers all over the world, but has also given a new meaning to the ‘cinema’ as the factory of dreams,” said Berlinale director duo Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian in a joint statement.
“Be it in the everlasting magic world of teenagers or in the reality that history has carved forever, his movies take us to a different level, where the big screen becomes the adequate surface for our emotions to be fulfilled.”
Referring to its two previous editions being impacted by the pandemic, Rissenbeek and Chatrian added: “If Berlinale 2023 represents a new beginning, we couldn’t find a better start than the one offered by Spielberg’s great work.”
As a director, producer and screenwriter, Spielberg’s credits consist of more than 100 films and series over the past 60 years. He has been nominated for an Osacar a total of 19 times throughout his career and has won best director for Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List.
His further honours include the Grand Cross with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in recognition of his film Schindler’s List and his Shoah Foundation in 1998. In 2001, ge was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) and in 2015, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US President Barack Obama.
His autobiographical The Fabelmans will be released by Universal Pictures Germany in German theatres in March 2023.
The Homage films and the date of the award ceremony will be revealed at a later date.
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