64th Venice Film Festival

August 29th to September 8th, 2007

Bernardo Bertolucci has been awarded the 75th anniversary Golden Lion, the special award set up this year to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Venice Film Festival (1932-2007). The 75th anniversary Golden Lion will be awarded to the director during the evening of the awards ceremony, on September 8th.
As part of the celebrations for Bertolucci, the barely shown but major documentary, La via del petrolio (1966), will be screened, in the version restored by the Cineteca Nazionale and ENI, along with the masterpiece Bertolucci presented at the Festival in 1970, The Spider’s Stratagem, in the newly restored version by the Cineteca Nazionale.

“Bernardo Bertolucci began his exceptional career over 40 years ago in Venice”, declared the Biennale’s President, Davide Croff, “and we are proud that he should have accepted this unique award, linked to the history of the Festival. Bertolucci is a great Italian director, who has had the courage to give a cosmopolitan dimension to his personal inspiration, combining industry requirements with a boundless love for cinema. For this reason, he embodies various aspects and characteristics of the Venice Festival in en emblematic manner, and is thus the ideal candidate for the 75th anniversary Golden Lion.

by the Biennale site