Stockholm Lifetime Achievement Award 2015 goes to director Stephen Frears
This year’s Stockholm Lifetime Achievement Award is granted to the praised director Stephen Frears. During the premiere of his latest film The Program, Frears visits Stockholm International Film Festival to receive the Bronze Horse.
Justification: British director Stephen Frears never shies away from taking on people’s dark and tragic sides, doing so with warmth, passion and a sense of humor.
This year’s receiver of the Lifetime Achievement Award is a filmmaker who is not afraid to take a stand for those who exist at the margins of society. His filmmaking ranges from political films with social pathos to grand epics with the biggest stars. Regardless of what form the story takes, Stephen Frears shows us that he is a director with a genuine curiosity for people’s life stories.
Stephen Frears has since his breakthrough with My Beautiful Laundrette (1984) mesmerized the audience with a series of acclaimed films. The director has been nominated for two Oscars with The Grifters (1990) and The Queen (2006), and awarded with the Silver Berlin Bear for The Hi-Lo Country (1998) at the Berlin International Film Festival. His latest film Philomena (2013) was shown during the Stockholm International Film Festival two years ago and was praised by both audiences and critics.
In the exhilarating thriller The Program (2015), Frears narrates the dramatic story of Lance Armstrong. The undefeated Tour de France champion was discovered to be involved in the most sophisticated doping program in the history of cycling. Starring Ben Foster as Armstrong and Chris O'Dowd as David Walsh, the journalist who devoted years to reveal the scandalous fraud, The Program is a gripping story with a deeply psychological portrait of its main characters.
Cast: Ben Foster, Lee Pace, Dustin Hoffman, Chris O 'Dowd, Elaine Cassidy, Jesse Plemons, Laura Donnelly.
The Program has premiere in Swedish cinema December 4. Distributor: AB Svensk Filmindustri.
The Stockholm Lifetime Achievement Award is presented annually to honor and acknowledge a longstanding career and an outstanding achievement in cinema. The prestigious award, in the shape of a 7,3kg (16 lb) Bronze Horse is the heaviest film award in the world. It is also a paraphrase on a national design icon, the Swedish Dala horse, and was created by artist Fredrik Swärd. The prize has previously been awarded to directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Quentin Tarantino, David Cronenberg, David Lynch, Oliver Stone and Mike Leigh.
Press contact:
Christina Wenger, press manager
Tel: 08-677 50 54/+46739-916617
press@stockholmfilmfestival.se
Weronika Pérez Borjas, press assistant
Tel: 08-677 50 54/+46729-018628
pressassistent@stockholmfilmfestival.se
The 26th Stockholm International Film Festival November 11-22, 2015
Stockholm International Film Festival started in 1990 and is today one of the leading competitive film festivals in Europe. The festival takes place every year in November with more than 200 films from more than 60 countries.
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