French director Claude Lelouche (A Man and a Woman, Happy New Year, The Beautiful Story) will be honored at Venice Film Fest with Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award, dedicated to a “personality who has made particularly original contribution to  contemporary film industry.”

Lelouch will receive the prize on Monday, Sept. 2 at Venice’s Sala Grande ahead of the out-of-competition screening of his latest feature, of his new feature, Finalement, a musical fantasy starring Kad Merad (Welcome to the Sticks, The Chorus). Elsa Zylberstain, Michel Boujenah, Sandrine Bonnaire, Barbara Pravi, and Françoise Gillard co-star.

The film was produced by Les Films 13 in co-production with France 2 Cinéma and Laurent Dassault Rond-Point. Metropolitan Filmexport is handling sales.

“Claude Lelouch is one of the top directors of French cinema, an excellent interpreter of its ‘quality,’ albeit alien to its main currents,” said Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera. “He is also very prolific filmmaker, having directed over sixty feature films. A precocious film lover, the author of shorts and musical videos, a cinematographer, screenwriter, actor, and producer.”

My Oscar Book

Calling him an “atypical and unclassifiable filmmaker,” Barbera singled out Lelouch’s 1966 feature A Man and a Woman, starring Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant, which won the Golden Palme in Cannes and went on to win two Oscars, for best foreign language film and for best original screenplay, for Lelouch and co-writer Pierre Uytterhoeven.

“Claude Lelouch’s career resembles a symphony played out across a lifetime,” said Cyrille Vigneron President and CEO of Cartier, which sponsors the award. “His filmography spans over sixty-four years, with many award-winning films…Lelouch’s characters are incredibly human, his life stories stay in our minds, in particular his unwavering obsession for beautiful love stories. What would Love do without Claude Lelouch to express its unstoppable power?”

The 81th Venice Film Fest runs August 28-Sept. 7.