Venice Film Fest to honour Sigourney Weaver

Hollywood veteran Sigourney Weaver will be honoured with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.

Weaver, who has been a part of several blockbuster projects across her career including Gorillas in the Mist as well as franchises like Ghostbusters, Alien, and Avatar, will receive the honour during the festival's 81st edition, which will be held from August 28 to September 7, said a press release posted on the official website of the festival.

“I am truly honoured to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the Biennale di Venezia. To be gifted this award is a privilege I share with all the filmmakers and collaborators I have worked with throughout the years," Weaver said.

Alberto Barbera, the director of the Venice Film Festival, said as a movie star, Weaver has built bridges between the "most sophisticated art-house cinema and movies that engage with the public in a frank and original way, all the while remaining true to herself”.

"As an authentic collaborator, rather than simply a malleable instrument in the hands of a director, she has contributed to the success of movies by James Cameron, Paul Schrader, Peter Weir, Michael Apted, Roman Polanski, Ivan Reitman, Mike Nichols, Ang Lee, and many others, each time imposing the mark of a complex personality -- at times contradictory but always authentic -- onto her own charismatic presence.

"Endowed with a remarkable temperament, able to move with delicacy yet without fragility, she has created the image of a woman who is self-assured and determined, dynamic and resolute; at the same time, with endlessly different shadings, she allows her intensely magnetic, feminine sensitivity to filter through," he said.

A three-time Oscar nominee, Weaver will be next seen in Dust Bunny alongside Mads Mikkelsen as well as The Gorge which also stars Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy.