“I am very happy and grateful to the Biennale di Venezia for this wonderful surprise”, said Cavani, who first impressed in Venice in 1965 with with Philippe Pétain: Processo a Vichy, followed by Francis of Assisi (1966), Galileo (1968), I cannibali (The Year of the Cannibals, 1970), Il gioco di Ripley (Ripley’s Game, 2002) and Clarisse (2012).

“I am overwhelmed and honored with the news from the Biennale di Venezia. I hope to celebrate this award with all the filmmakers I have worked with. This award is a tribute to all of them as well,” said Leung Chiu-wai, who in City of Sadness (1989), Cyclo (1995) and Lust, Caution (2007) has starred in 3 Golden Lion winners.

In 2001 won the Palme d’Or for best actor for In the Mood for Love, one of 7 collaborations with Kar-wai.

Venice director Alberto Barbera, who recommended the two names for lifetime achievement Golden Lions, described Cavani as “one of the emblematic protagonists of the New Italian Cinema of the 1960s.”

She was a “versatile artist who frequents television, theatre, and opera with the same unconventional spirit and  intellectual ferment that have made her movies famous.” He said: “Hers is a political gaze in the highest sense of the term, anti-dogmatic, non-aligned, brave in the way she confronts even the most challenging taboos, alien to trends, resistant to compromise and production opportunism. Instead, she is open to a fertile ambiguity in the characters and situations she presents.”

Tony Leung

Of Leung, whose credits also include the likes of Hero, Infernal Affairs, Red Cliff and, more recently, Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Barbera said he had “achieved a unique profile as a pan-Asian and global star confirming his presence within ever-shifting screen cultures, deconstructing the traditional idea of male stardom and bringing compelling sensitivity to all his roles.”