Director Peter Weir will receive a big honor at the Venice Film Festival

Director Peter Weir, known for films such as dead Poets SocietyThe Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement will be awarded at the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival.

Australian director also known for directing and writing scripts the Truman Show And Master and Commander.

“With only thirteen films directed over the course of forty years, Peter Weir has secured his place among the great directors of modern cinema,” Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera said in a statement.

Barbera said Weir made a name for himself as the leading man behind the rebirth of Australian cinema in the late 1970s thanks to two films: the cars that ate paris (1974) and cult classic Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

The international success of his following two films, Gallipoli And year of living dangerously Then “opened the doors of Hollywood.”

Barbera also praised the director’s work, noting Weir’s “need to combine meditations on personal subjects and reach as large an audience as possible”.

The Venice Film Festival will run from August 28 to September 7.