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Peter Weir to receive Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at Venice film festival


Australian director of Gallipoli and Dead Poets Society praised by festival for his impact in Hollywood ‘while keeping his distance from the American movie industry’

Peter Weir, the Australian director and screenwriter behind The Truman Show, Dead Poets Society and Gallipoli, will receive a prestigious Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at this year’s Venice film festival. Born in 1944 in Sydney, Weir cut his teeth as a trainee director at the Commonwealth Film Unit – an early predecessor of Screen Australia – before breaking out in 1974 with his debut feature, the horror-comedy The Cars That Ate Paris. He became a mainstay at the Academy Awards over the next two decades with Dead Poets Society, the rom-com Green Card, The Truman Show and the Russell Crowe period epic Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World gaining nominations.

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