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Director Steve McQueen receives Stockholm Visionary Award 2024

Oct 3, 2024

Multiple Oscar Academy Award winning filmmaker Steve McQueen, comes set to attend the Stockholm International Film Festival to receive the Stockholm Visionary Award, and to present a screening and show his latest feature film Blitz. The screening takes place at Bio Skandia on November 12, at 6 pm, followed by an exclusive Face2Face with the director on stage

This year’s Stockholm Visionary Award is awarded to one of the most influential European filmmakers of our time, whose expression is characterised by great precision and awareness. With his cinematic poetry, he creates moving images that not only touch the audience, but also challenge their perceptions of history, power and human experience. His skillful handling allows the unspoken to be as powerful as the dialogue. This director and screenwriter belong to a social realist tradition of filmmaking, where his keen eye captures the personal stories, conflicts and relationships that nuance the British self-image both historically and in the present. His distinct cinematic language keeps breaking new ground for film as an art form.

Blitz follows the epic journey of George (Elliott Heffernan), a 9-year-old boy in World War II London whose mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) sends him to safety in the English countryside. George, defiant and determined to return home to his mom and his grandfather Gerald (Paul Weller) in East London, embarks on an adventure, only to find himself in immense peril, while a distraught Rita searches for her missing son.

Steve McQueen began his professional career as a visual artist, earning him many accolades including the Turner Prize in 1999 with film and video as his main means of expression. During the early 1990s, his films were noted for their emotional intensity carried out with sparing means and expression. He has since gone on to create a filmography, all critically acclaimed and award-winning feature films as well as a film anthology series, documentary series and a documentary feature that are inspired by themes and subjects. Films on various subjects, e.g. Hunger (2008) tells the story of the IRA Hunger Striker Bobby Sands; Shame (2011), aboutsex addiction, 12 Years a Slave (2013) is the adaptation of a Solomon Northup, a real man who was sold into slavery, about slavery and racism and Widows (2018), a crime thriller starring Viola Davis. McQueen has exhibited and held his artwork in major films around the world. His latest short film, Grenfell, is about the tragedy in which 72 people died in the fire that ravaged Grenfell Tower in 2017.

The Stockholm Visionary Award was established in 2004 with the aim of recognizing the visionaries in modern film. The prize has previously been awarded to pioneering filmmakers such as Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky, Wes Anderson and most recently the award went to the French director Catherine Breillat.