Catherine Deneuve receives the Venice Golden Lion for career

The Venice Film Festival honors French film icon Catherine Deneuve with the Golden Lion for her lifetime achievement.

Throughout her career, Deneuve has worked with some of Europe’s biggest directors such as Luis BunuelFrancois Truffaut, Manoel De Oliveira, Roman Polanski and Lars von Trier to name just a few.

Deneuve’s long association with the Lido dates back to 1967, when Buñuel’s Belle de Jour, in which she played a middle-class Parisian housewife seeking erotic liberation by working part-time in a brothel, won the Golden Lion. Deneuve won the Venice Volpi Cup for Best Actress in 1998 for her role in Nicole Garcia’s Place Vendôme and served as Festival Jury President in 2006.

“It is a pleasure to receive this prestigious award at the Venice Film Festival, which I love and have known since Luis Buñuel’s ‘Belle de Jour’ received the Golden Lion,” Deneuve said in a statement.

“It is also an honor to be chosen for this tribute because the Mostra [as the Venice fest is known in Italy] received me so many times for so many films. Many Thanks. With friendship,” she added.

Venice Artistic Director Alberto Barbera described Deneuve in the statement as “an undeniable talent” whose skills and extraordinary and refined beauty have made her “the true face of French cinema; a timeless diva; a true icon of the big screen,” he said.

“Catherine Deneuve was one of the most important figures of the Nouvelle Vague and represented a stylistic idea that identified with fashion beyond the Alps. She embodied the essence of the universally recognized diva and established herself as one of the greatest acting talents in cinema history,” added Barbera.

The 79th edition of Venice will take place from August 31st to September 10th.