Takeshi Kitano will receive a life time achievement award at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

The acclaimed Japanese director and actorwill make his first trip to Greece to receive the festival's Honorary Golden Alexander and to present his last film Achilles And The Tortoise (Achilles To Kame). Click here to see Screen's review.He will also offer a masterclass.

Achilles and the Tortoise, premiered last month in Venice, a festival where Kitano was awarded a Golden Lion in 1997 for Hana-Bi, is the last part of film maker's self-reflective trilogy that includes the films Takeshi's (2005) and Glory to the Filmmaker! (2007). The trilogy investigates Kitano's own relationship to art, his career and the entertainment industry that made him famous, both in Japan and later in the rest of the world.

Kitano joins a roster of other prestigious international film makers set to attend and be honoured at Thessaloniki.

They include Belgian directors two times Cannes Palme d'Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, two times Academy award winner Argentinian composer Gustavo Santaolalla, Brazilian multiawarded director Walter Salles as well as the emblematic Argentinean producer Lita Stantic and the celebrated English director Terence Davies.

The full line up of the event will be announced late October.

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