American artist and director Julian Schnabel (At Eternity’s Gate, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Basquiat) will be honored with the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, Cartier and the Venice festival announced Wednesday. The annual prize recognizes a personality who has made an especially original contribution to contemporary cinema.
Schnabel will be honored at an award ceremony on Wednesday, September 3, at the Sala Grande, ahead of the out-of-competition screening of his new film In the Hand of Dante.
The crime drama follows a handwritten manuscript of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, which makes its way from the Vatican library to a mob boss in New York, who turns to writer and Dante expert Nick Tosches to verify its authenticity. Schnabel and Louise Kugelberg adapted the film from Tosches’ novel. Oscar Issac, playing Tosches and Dante, leads an ensemble cast that includes Gal Gadot, Gerard Butler, Al Pacino, John Malkovich, Martin Scorsese, Jason Momoa, Louis Cancelmi, and Franco Nero. Produced by DreamCrew Entertainment, MeMo Films, TWIN Productions and Artofficial Productions, In the Hand of Dante is being sold internationally by WME Independent.
“I first stepped foot in Venice in November of 1976,” said Schnabel, accepting the honor. “At the time, I went to Padua to see the Scrovegni Chapel of Giotto and to see the paintings in Venice. I never dreamed that I would become a filmmaker, let alone be honored with this award, and be included alongside so many filmmakers I admire, because in fact I am a painter. But I guess I am a filmmaker as well. I’ve now shown my films at the Venice Film Festival for almost 30 years, and to receive the Glory to the Filmmaker Award for the world premiere of my new film In the Hand of Dante means so much to me, as tracking Dante and Nick’s trajectory in this film has somehow mirrored my own life. Thank you. I couldn’t be happier about this.”
Festival director Alberto Barbera praised Schnabel’s originality and artistic vision: “Each of Julian Schnabel’s films is a world of its own. None is like the one before or the one after. Yet, it is not a coincidence that most of them are portraits of artists and passionate depictions of the artistic process. As generous as it is wildly imaginative, Schnabel’s cinematic output is a gift to film, articulated through a wholly original language. His new feature, In the Hand of Dante, is his most ambitious project to date. As Martin Scorsese said when asked to describe them, Schnabel’s films are ‘abundant, overflowing and vibrating with life, pulse. There is always more in the frame to see, to experience, and to feel.’
Born in New York City in 1951 and raised in Brownsville, Texas, Schnabel first achieved acclaim as a painter in New York during the late 1970s. He has exhibited at the Venice Biennale Art Exhibition five times (1980, 1982, 1993, 1997 and 2003). His directorial debut Basquiat, about the renowned New York street artist, premiered in competition at Venice in 1996. Follow up Before Night Falls (2000), starring Javier Bardem as Cuban poet and novelist, Reinaldo Arenas, won the Venice Grand Jury Prize. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the story of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby and the stroke that almost totally paralyzed him; won best director in Cannes in 2007 and picked up the Golden Globe for best foreign film. His 2018 feature At Eternity’s Gate, starring Willem Dafoe as Vincent van Gogh, won Dafoe Venice’s best actor honor.
The 2025 Venice film festival runs Aug. 27-Sept. 6.
