Just days after Spain’s San Sebastian Film Festival announced that it would award Johnny Depp a lifetime achievement award, another festival has followed suit. The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, the Czech festival that is considered the premiere cinematic event in Central and Eastern Europe, will honor the actor as an “icon of the contemporary cinema.” Both awards come as a surprise and shock, at the very least to those in America and in Hollywood, where Depp has, in recent months, ostensibly fallen into pariah status following the messy string of allegations and lawsuits over his relationship with the actress Amber Heard.
After years of back-and-forth of accusations of abuse levied from both Depp and Heard (another defamation trial is scheduled for 2022), a tipping point for the industry came last November when Depp lost a libel lawsuit against the publisher of the British tabloid The Sun, which had characterized him as a “wife beater.” According to the court, “the great majority of alleged assaults of Ms. Heard by Mr. Depp have been proved.” Days after the ruling, Depp revealed on Instagram that, as per a request from Warner Bros., he had resigned from his role in the Fantastic Beasts franchise.
