06/10/2009

Two emblematic personalities of European cinema – French actress Isabelle Huppert and British director Ken Loach – are to be honoured at the 22nd European Film Awards, which will be held on December 12, in Bochum, Germany.

The European Film Academy will present 56-year-old Huppert with the award European Achievement in World Cinema 2009 in recognition for her contribution to the world of Cinema. Huppert has worked in France and abroad for over 30 years with directors such as Andrzej Wajda, the Taviani brothers, Jean-Luc Godard, and Michael Cimino, as well as Maurice Pialat, Marco Ferreri, Benoît Jacquot and Bertrand Tavernier.

Her presence is also inevitably linked to several films by Claude Chabrol (Madame Bovary, A Judgement in Stone, A Comedy of Power [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) and Michael Haneke, the Austrian filmmaker who directed her in the 2001 title The Piano Teacher [+see also:
trailer
film profile], for which she won her first EFA award for the Best European Actress.

Huppert also likes to put her talent to the service of emerging filmmakers: in the last ten years she has been seen in Christophe Honoré's controversial second feature Ma Mère [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and in Joachim Lafosse's family drama Private Property [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile].

Loach (73) will be awarded the European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding and dedicated body of work. Having begun his career in British television, Loach made his first film for cinema, Poor Cow, in 1967. Throughout the years he has established himself as a politically and socially committed director with films such as Riff-Raff (European Film of the Year, 1991), Land and Freedom (European Film of the Year, 1995) and Sweet Sixteen [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (EFA Critics' Award 2002 – Fipresci Prize).

Some of his recent titles include 2006 Palme d'Or winner The Wind That Shakes the Barley [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ken Loach
interview: Rebecca O’Brien
film profile], It's a Free World… [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and this year's Looking For Eric [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Cannes 2009
Ken Loach
interview: Steve Evets - actor
film profile].