October 12, 2024, 18:23 PM
October 12, 2024, 18:23 PM
This Saturday, filmmaker Costa-Gavras received a special Lumière Award for his career at the opening ceremony of the fifteenth edition of the festival named after the inventors of cinema.
A tribute to the Franco-Greek director and screenwriter, author of classics such as ‘Z’ or ‘Missing’, had been announced for the ceremony, but the tribute finally consisted of the presentation of the highest award offered by the contest, which in this edition will also be presented. will be awarded, next Friday, to the French actress Isabelle Huppert.
“Tonight I feel honored and shocked by your extraordinary welcome. You offer me an award that I had come to see many times and that for me had always been fair. Tonight I also think it is,” Costa-Gavras said with a broad smile. which made the Tony Garnier pavilion, packed with about 5,000 attendees, laugh.
The American director Tim Burton, winner of the 2022 Lumière Prize, was in charge of presenting him with the award, a replica of the reels of the first films in the history of cinema shot by the Lumière brothers at the end of the 19th century in Lyon.
Costa-Gavras, a leader in political and committed cinema, stated in his acceptance speech that he will keep the award in his “heart and in that of his family”, and his wife, Michelle, who “has been with him for 60 years” dedicated it to him. ” and that he is “the person I trust the most.”
Also surrounded on stage by the performers of his latest film, ‘Le dernier souffle’, among whom was the actress Ángela Molina, the filmmaker was full of praise for the festival, which he considers “without a doubt, the most popular in France , surely from Europe, and probably from the world”.
Costa-Gavras was referring to the “formidable cinephilia” of the people of Lyon who pack the movie theaters year after year during this week-long classic film festival to see cinema retrospectives and restored prints.
