British filmmaker Steve McQueen will be feted at this year’s Camerimage Film Festival with the Outstanding Director Award for career achievement. The announcement was made this morning by the Polish festival.
“Steve McQueen is an artist known for his uncompromising engagement in tackling difficult social and political issues,” Marek Żydowicz, Camerimage Festival Director, said this morning.
“His vivid filmmaking style explores the problems of racism, violence, addiction, and inequality, constantly moving and provoking discussion, which situates him as one of the most important contemporary film creators. We couldn’t imagine a better laureate for the Special Award for Outstanding Director than Steve McQueen.”
McQueen is a Turner Prize and Oscar-winning filmmaker. His feature film debut was 2008’s Hunger, starring Michael Fassbender as a starving IRA hunger striker. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Camera D’Or. He is perhaps best known internationally for 2013’s 12 Years A Slave, which nabbed the Best Picture Oscar, making McQueen the first Black filmmaker to take the honor.
McQueen’s latest feature Blitz will open the London Film Festival in October. Directed, produced, and written by McQueen, the film follows the epic journey of George, a 9-year-old boy in World War II London whose mother Rita sends him to safety in the English countryside. The Synopsis reads: George, defiant and determined to return home to Rita and his grandfather Gerald in East London, ensues on an adventure, only to find himself in immense peril, while a distraught Rita searches for her missing son. Blitz marks McQueen’s first sole feature screenwriting credit.
The film stars Saoirse Ronan and newcomer Elliott Heffernan, with Harris Dickinson, Benjamin Clementine, Kathy Burke, Paul Weller, Stephen Graham, Leigh Gill, Mica Ricketts, CJ Beckford, Alex Jennings, Joshua McGuire, Hayley Squires, Erin Kellyman, and Sally Messham rounding out the cast.
This year’s Camerimage Film Festival runs from November 16 to 23.
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