US filmmaker Tim Burton will be feted with France’s prestigious Lumière Award at the 14th edition of the classic film-focused Lumière Festival in Lyon, running October 15-23.
He follows in the footsteps of previous honorees Jane Campion (2021), Francis Ford Coppola (2019), Wong Kar-wai (2017), Catherine Deneuve (2016), Pedro Almodóvar and Quentin Tarantino (2013).
“This fall, Lumière 2022 will offer a dive into a wonderland – somewhere between Americana and its legends, Victorian England, futuristic megalopolises and neighbourhoods of suburbia – in the company of the heroes, monsters, monstrous heroes or heroic monsters of Tim Burton’s world,” said the festival in a release.
The festival paid tribute to the many highlights of Burton’s 40-year filmmaking career from early hits Beetlejuice (1988) and Edward Scissorhands (1990), to quirky works playing with mainstream sci-fi comedy and musical genres such as Mars Attacks! (1996), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Dark Shadows (2012), Sleepy Hollow (1999), and major box office hits such as Alice in Wonderland (2010).
The release also evoked the array of acting talent that has worked with Burton throughout his career, including Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer, Glenn Close, Christina Ricci, Eva Green and Marion Cotillard.
The Lumière Film Festival was launched in 2009 by twin-hatted Cannes Film Festival Delegate General Thierry Frémaux, in his other role as director of the Institut Lumière in Lyon.
Situated on the site of the former home and factory of cinema pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumière, the institution was created in 1982 to preserve their memory and cinema heritage.
Other highlights of the upcoming Lumière Festival will include a musical tribute to Clint Eastwood – bannered Eastwood Symphonic – orchestrated by his son Kyle Eastwood.