Steven Spielberg to be given lifetime achievement award at Berlin Film Festival

Steven Spielberg is to be honoured at the Berlin International Film Festival in February for his life’s work.

Festival organisers said on Tuesday that the 75-year-old American director, producer and screenwriter will be awarded an honorary Golden Bear, the annual event’s top prize, for a body of work that comprises more than 100 movies and series.

The multiple Oscar winner’s work “is unique in the history of international cinema of the past 60 years for its immense variety”, the festival said.

Spielberg’s productions have included everything from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial to Schindler’s List.

The Berlin festival will screen his latest film, The Fabelmans.

Festival co-directors Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian said in a statement: “With an incredible career, Steven Spielberg has not only enchanted generations of viewers all over the world, but has also given a new meaning to the ‘cinema’ as the factory of dreams.

“Be it in the everlasting magic world of teenagers or in the reality that history has carved forever, his movies take us to a different level, where the big screen becomes the adequate surface for our emotions to be fulfilled.”

– The Berlin event, the first of the year’s major European film festivals, will run from February 16 to 26.