George Lucas will receive the Palme d’Or of Honor at the Cannes Film Festival

George Lucas He will receive the Palme d’Or of Honor at the next Cannes Film Festival, in recognition of his “immense figure” as a director, producer and screenwriter, the organization announced this Tuesday. The tribute to Lucas, 79, will take place on May 25 during the closing ceremony of the 77th edition of the French festival.

“Responsible for sagas such as ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Indiana Jones’, George Lucas has forever given the box office success its letters of nobility and viewers around the world an unparalleled pleasure,” the organization said in a statement.

Last year, the Festival paid this tribute to the American actors Harrison Ford and Michael Douglas.

“I am truly honored by this special recognition, which means a lot to me,” indicated the filmmaker, who remembers that the Cannes Festival “has always held a special place in my heart.”

Lucas recalled that his first film, ‘THX-1138’, was already selected to be screened at Cannes in 1971 and that since then he has participated in the festival on numerous occasions, as a screenwriter, producer or director.

The festival recalled that with ‘THX-1138’, produced with the help of Francis Ford Coppola, Lucas raised on the screen some themes that have remained throughout his career, such as science fiction, the fight against destiny and uniformity or changing values ​​over the debate between good and evil.

Later, he created ‘American Graffiti’ (1973), an “ode to American youth” that launched the career of Harrison Ford, after which he embarked on his most ambitious project.

It was ‘Star Wars’ (1977), a “visionary intergalactic odyssey that reinvented the codes of cinematographic genres” that, as JRR Tolkien did with his books, created its own geography, its own peoples and languages, its moral values ​​and even its vehicles.

This film “became an authentic global sociocultural phenomenon, which continues to this day,” the festival added.

Lucas’s “incessant passion” for technique also stands out, with the founding of the Light & Magic firm, which allowed him to become a pioneer of visual effects by being at the forefront of numerous technologies.

Lucas also contributed to the evolution of stereo sound thanks to his company THX and founded the famous animation studio Pixar, which revolutionized that format with the use of computers and which was acquired by the giant Disney in 2006.

Furthermore, George Lucas has been an “exceptional” producer, with the three ‘Star Wars’ trilogies, the Indiana Jones saga, which he created, but also with masterpieces such as ‘Kagemusha’, by the Japanese Akira Kurosawa.

The Cannes Film Festival is “delighted to pay tribute to one of the greatest personalities of contemporary cinema, a man with an extraordinary career that unites great entertainment and innovation, mythology and modernity, and cinephilia and technology,” the statement concluded.

With information from EFE