The Venice Film Festival is to honour Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci with a prize marking the 75th anniversary of the world's oldest movie fest, organisers said Monday.
Bertolucci, 67, best-known for Last Tango In Paris (1972) and The Last Emperor (1987), will receive the special Golden Lion on September 8, the last day of the ten-day event.
Davide Croff, president of the foundation that runs the festival, said "We are proud (Bertolucci) has accepted this unique award, linked to the history of the festival".
"Bertolucci is a great Italian auteur, who had the courage to give his personal inspiration a cosmopolitan dimension, wedding the demands of the industry with a boundless love for cinema".
"He embodies in an emblematic way aspects and characteristics of the very identity of the Venice Film Festival and thus represents the ideal 75th Anniversary Golden Lion".
This year's fest will feature an acclaimed documentary on the oil industry with which Bertolucci made his Venice debut in 1966 as well as a specially restored version of another of his Venice premieres, The Spider's Stratagem (1970).
Bertolucci, considered one of Italy's greatest directors, has never won a prize at Venice.
The Last Emperor won nine Academy Awards including best director and best screenplay.
Bertolucci also earned Oscar nominations for Last Tango and The Conformist (1970).
Other notable Bertolucci films include 1900 (1976), La Luna (1979), The Sheltering Sky (1990) and Stealing Beauty (1996).
The Venice festival was first staged in 1932 but was suspended during the war years and so this edition will actually be the 64th.
The 2007 festival will feature a selection of 60 movies, including 20 competing for the Golden Lion prize.
It will kick off on August 29 with Atonement, an adaptation of Ian McEwan's best-selling novel.
US director Tim Burton will receive the Golden Lion for career achievement on September 5.
