Ridley Scott to be awarded with the Cartier ‘Glory to the Filmmaker’ prize at Venice Film Festival

La Biennale di Venezia and Cartier have announced that the legendary British director and producer Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Blade Runner, Alien) is the recipient of the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker award of the 78^th Venice International Film Festival (September 1 – 11, 2021), dedicated to a personality who has made a particularly original contribution to the contemporary film industry.

The award ceremony for Ridley Scott will take place on Friday September 10^th 2021 in the Sala Grande (Palazzo del Cinema) at 9.15 pm, before the screening Out of Competition of his new film, The Last Duel  (USA, UK, 142′) with Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer, Ben Affleck. The Last Duel, a gripping tale of betrayal and vengeance set against the brutality of 14^th century France, comes from 20^th Century Studios and visionary filmmaker Ridley Scott.

Welcoming this announcement, the Director of the Venice Film Festival Alberto Barbera has stated: “His personal approach to genre films, which successfully reconciles the requirements of entertainment, the expectations of the general public and the demands of critics, is the most distinctive element of Ridley Scott’s filmmaking. Had he directed one film only, the English director – who made his debut in film at the age of 40 with The Duellist, before capturing the attention of the general public with the global box-office success Alien – would still have earned his rightful place in the Olympus of the great filmmakers of contemporary cinema thanks to Blade Runner, the most influential film in modern science fiction, which became a benchmark for decades to come.

“Throughout his amazing and prolific career, which counts just short of thirty films completed with astonishing frequency, Scott has demonstrated his ability to navigate the most disparate genres with ease, injecting new lifeblood into each one of them. In Thelma & Louise he seemed to anticipate years ahead of time today’s debate on the status of women and their compulsion to assert themselves. In Gladiator he revived the sword-and-sandal genre, which had been abandoned after being thoroughly exploited in the late 1960s, whereas in Black Hawk Down he imposed a new, amazing standard in the participatory realism of war movies. In The Martian, finally, he successfully introduced tones of light comedy into a typically dystopic situation. His indisputable merits include the extraordinary visual talent and painterly taste he has demonstrated in the creation of sumptuous Baroque and graphically majestic images, accompanied by a rare and priceless talent for directing actors.”

”For this first edition of the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award, Cartier is proud to join the Venice Film Festival in paying tribute to Ridley Scott’s outstanding work, talent and particularly original contribution to the contemporary film industry”, declared Arnaud Carrez, chief marketing officer of Cartier. “Ridley Scott has enriched the world of cinema with his productions since the 70s and has unequivocally become a mainstay in contemporary artistic creation”.

The 78^th Venice International Film Festival of La Biennale di Venezia will be held on the Lido from September 1^st  to 11^th, 2021, directed by Alberto Barbera.