Peter Weir, the Australian director and screenwriter behind The Truman Show, Dead Poets Society and Gallipoli, will receive a prestigious Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at this year’s Venice film festival.
“With a total of only 13 movies directed over the course of 40 years, Peter Weir has secured a place in the firmament of great directors of modern cinema,” said the festival’s artistic director, Alberto Barbera, on Thursday.
Barbera praised the 79-year-old film-maker’s ability to balance integrity and commercial success in a “daring, rigorous and spectacular film opus”.
“Weir combines reflections on personal themes and a need to reach as vast an audience as possible,” he said. “Celebrating a taste for storytelling and innate romanticism, Weir has reinforced his own role in the Hollywood establishment, all the while keeping his distance from the American movie industry.”
Weir said, responding to the Venice award: “The Venice international film festival and its Golden Lion for lifetime achievement are part of the folklore of our craft.
“To be singled out as a recipient for a lifetime’s work as a director is a considerable honour.”
Born in 1944 in Sydney, Weir cut his teeth as a trainee director at the Commonwealth Film Unit – an early predecessor of Screen Australia – before breaking out in 1974 with his debut feature, the horror-comedy The Cars That Ate Paris.
He quickly became a trailblazer of Australian new wave cinema in the 70s with his subsequent films – the eerie classic Picnic At Hanging Rock and the moving war drama Gallipoli, starring a young Mel Gibson as a solider in the first world war – gaining international recognition.
Later in his career, he turned his attention to Hollywood, beginning with the 1985 crime thriller Witness, which was nominated for eight Oscars and won two – for screenplay and editing.
He became a mainstay at the Academy Awards over the next two decades with Dead Poets Society, the rom-com Green Card, The Truman Show and the Russell Crowe period epic Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World gaining nominations.
All up, Weir went on to claim six Oscar nominations personally for his work as director, writer, or producer. In 2022, he became the first Australian film-maker to receive an honorary Oscar.
In March this year, Weir announced that he was retired from film-making, saying: “Why did I stop cinema? Because, quite simply, I have no more energy.”
The 81st edition of Venice film festival will run 28 August to 7 September.
