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| Richard Gere: “Outstanding contribution to world cinema” award in Czech Republic Photo: Richard Mowe |
Actor Richard Gere, 65, is to receive a Crystal Globe for his “outstanding contribution to world cinema” at next month’s Karlovy Vary Film Festival, celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Gere stars in the event’s opening film by Oren Moverman, Time Out Of Mind, in which he plays a homeless person in contemporary New York whose long estranged daughter (Jena Malone from Hunger Games) offers him his only strand of hope - if they can be reconciled. Both will be on the red carpet for the gala opening on 3 July.
The actor's reputation rests on stand-out performances in American Gigolo by Paul Schrader, An Officer And A Gentleman (Taylor Hackford), Cotton Club (Francis Ford Coppola), Internal Affairs (Mike Figgis) and opposite Julia Roberts in his mega-hit Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall).
Another recent Gere title, Franny by Andrew Renzi, also will be shown in the Festival. In this, Gere stars as a philanthropist who gets involved in the lives of a young married couple in an attempt to compensate for his traumas of the past. Renzi will be at the festival to present the film with his star.
The Festival’s closing choice, also announced today (22 June), will be a Sundance hit from earlier in the year, Sleeping With Other People by Lesley Headland, a romantic comedy about a couple whose dorm room coupling comes back to haunt them 12 years on when they meet again and discover they both have problems with infidelity.
Harvey Keitel will be in attendance to support Paolo Sorrentino’s Cannes offering Youth (in which he appeared opposite Michael Caine) while Fifty Shades Of Grey star Jamie Dornan will visit the Czech spa town for screenings of his new film Anthropoid, with director Sean Ellis also on the guest list for a Second World War action adventure about the assassination of a Nazi chief by Czech paratroopers (Dornan plays one of them).
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| Richard Gere as he appears as a homeless New Yorker in Time Out Of Mind |
Other guests lining up to take the mineral waters in what has become the Cannes of Central and Eastern Europe will be director Ryan Fleck with his road movie Mississippi Grind, while Italian director Saverio Constanzo and actress Alba Rohrwacher will introduce Hungry Hearts.
The creator of such cult horror classics as Night of the Living Dead George A Romero will be on hand to introduce a restored copy of Michael Powell and Emetic Pessburger’s Tales Of Hoffman.
The Festival’s Grand Jury will comprise: US cinema chain operator and film distributor Tim League of Alamo Drafthouse; Russian director, screenwriter and producer Angelina Nikonova, Icelandic actor and producer Olafur Darri Olafsson, Iranian-born French-based producer-sales agent Hengameh Panahi, president of Celluloid Dreams, and Ondrej Zach, senior VP for programming, HBO Europe, and head of programming and acquisitions for HBO Europe in the Czech Republic.
Previous recipients of the Crystal Globe have included Robert De Niro, Helen Mirren and Mel Gibson.
