Catherine Deneuve, the grande dame of French cinema, will be honoured at the Dubai International Film Festival, running from December 9 to 16. She will be presented with festival’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award -- recognising her celebrated career of 120 movies over six decades.
Deneuve made her silver screen debut in 1957, when she was barely 13, and went on to make a mark in cinema with her portrayal of enigmatic characters.
She was nominated for an astonishing 31 Césars (the French equivalent of Oscar), and she won several, including those for Francois Truffaut’s romantic drama set in the 1940s Paris, The Last Metro, and Regis Wargnier’s epic on French Indochina, called Indochine. This movie also fetched an Academy nomination for her.
Watch Catherine Deneuve’s top 10 performances:
As the chairman of the festival, Abdulhamid Juma, said, “Deneuve is an icon and one of the most influential women in cinema. Her contribution to film across the globe has been phenomenal and we are proud to be honouring her incredible talents at the festival this year.”
The festival will also honour Indian actor, Naseeruddin Shah. In a span of four decades, Naseer, appeared in more than 200 movies, and in roles that were marvellously diverse and different. As an upright and shy landlord in his first film outing, Shyam Benegal’s Nishant, after a stint with Delhi’s National School of Drama, Naseer went on to play a rebellious villager in Manthan, a nihilistic and self-centred director in Bhumika, an angry motor mechanic in Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyoon Aata Hai, a lecherous policeman in Mirch Masala, a downtrodden and ill-treated labourer in Paar, an autorickshaw driver in Hero Hiralal, a royal in Omkara (inspired by Shakespeare’s Othello), a common man in A Wednesday, an ageing South Indian superstar in The Dirty Picture, a coffin maker in The Coffin Maker...
One can also not forget Naseer as Inspector Ghote, the fictional detective of HRF Keating’s novels, in The Perfect Murder (in English by Merchant Ivory), as Gandhi in Hey Ram (with Kamal Haasan) and as a colonial lord in TV Chandran’s classic Ponthan Mada (Malayalam).
Naseer, whose performances in Sparsh, Monsoon Wedding. Aakrosh and Chakra will also go down in the history of cinema as brilliant and unforgettable, clinched the best actor trophy for Paar at Venice in 1984.
Watch Naseeruddin Shah’s court-scene from the Pakistani film Khuda Ke Liye here:
(Gautaman Bhaskaran will cover the Dubai International Film Festival.)
