The decision was taken by the Board of Directors of the Biennale, which adopted the proposal of the Director of the Exhibition, Alberto Barbera.
Statements from director Weir and actress Weaver
"The Venice Film Festival and its Golden Lion are part of the imagination of our profession. To be awarded for a lifetime's work as directors is a great honor.”, said Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show, Master & Commander) in accepting the proposal.
“I am truly honored to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice Biennale. This award is a privilege that I share with all the directors and collaborators I have worked with over the years. I proudly accept this recognition, which also celebrates all those who have contributed to bringing these films to life” said Sigourney Weaver (Alien, Ghostbusters, Gorillas in the Mist, Avatar, The Master Gardener) in accepting the proposal.
Regarding the recognition to Peter Weir, Director Alberto Barbera stated
“With only 13 films made over the course of forty years, Peter weir has secured a place for himself in the firmament of the great directors of modern cinema. By the end of the 1970s, he had established himself as the main author of the renaissance of Australian cinema by virtue of two works, The Cars That Ate Paris and Picnic at Hanging Rock, the second of which would acquire cult status over the years. The international success of his next two films, The Broken Years and The Year of Living Dangerously, opened the doors to Hollywood cinema for him, of which he quickly became one of the main protagonists, a supporter of a cinema capable of combining reflection on personal themes with the need to address the widest possible audience. Despite the diversity of the subjects he tackles, it is not difficult to find in his cinema, at once bold, rigorous and spectacular, the constant of a sensitivity that allows him to tackle eminently modern themes, such as the fascination with nature and its mysteries, the crisis of adults in consumerist societies, the difficulties of educating young people for life, the temptation of physical and cultural isolation, but also the call of adventurous impulses and the instinct of healthy rebellion. Celebrating the taste for storytelling and innate romanticism, Weir has succeeded in the enterprise of strengthening his role in the Hollywood establishment while underlining a rather clear distance from the American film industry. Witness, Mosquito Coast, Dead Poets Society, Fearless, The Truman Show and Master & Commander are the main stages of an artistic journey that has been able to maintain its fundamental integrity right through to the commercial success of the films he has made.”
About the recognition to Sigourney Weaver, instead he declared: "There are few rivals for an actress of Sigourney Weaver's caliber. With an important theatrical background, she conquered the general cinema audience with Alien, by Ridley Scott, quickly becoming an emblematic figure of the 80s, during which she coined the image of an unprecedented heroine for the action genre, capable of successfully holding her own against the male models who until then had dominated epic and adventure cinema. Not content with having paved the way for numerous other epigones, the actress continued in the incessant search for her own identity that was constantly called into question, through choices that range from genre films to comedies, from auteur films to children's films, escaping the labels that would have wanted her confined to the victorious icon of the Reagan era. In the role of an authentic collaborator rather than a simple tool to be shaped by the hands of a director, she contributed to the success of the films of James Cameron, Paul Schrader, Peter Weir, Michael Apted, Roman Polanski, Ivan Reitman, Mike Nichols, Ang Lee and many others, managing each time to impress on her charismatic presence the indelible mark of a complex, sometimes contradictory, always authentic figure. Gifted with a great temperament, capable of moving delicately but without fragility, she imposed the image of a confident and determined woman, dynamic and tenacious, not without letting a feminine sensitivity of intense magnetism shine through, with ever different nuances. The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement is the deserved recognition of a star who has been able to build bridges between the most sophisticated auteur cinema and films that dialogue with the public in a frank and original way, without ever giving up being herself”.
