Ethan Hawke to Receive Lucca Film Festival’s Golden Panther Award

Filmmaker Ethan Hawke will be honored at this year’s Lucca Film Festival in Italy with the event’s Golden Panther Award as well as present his latest film Wildcat, in which he directs his daughter Maya, on Sept. 26.

Hawke will also hold a public master class at the Italian festival and present Lucca’s Lifetime Achievement Award to Paul Schrader, who directed the actor in the critically acclaimed film First Reformed.

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The festival will also screen an extensive retrospective of Hawke’s filmography, including Dead Poets Society, Gattaca, Boyhood and the Before trilogy (Sunrise, Sunset and Midnight).

Hawke is a four-time Academy Award nominee: for best supporting actor for Training Day (2002) and Boyhood (2015), and for best adapted screenplay for Before Sunset (2005) and Before Midnight (2014).

“At the age of 14, he made his debut in the film Explorers (1985) alongside River Phoenix,” Lucca organizers highlighted about Hawke on Wednesday. “He studied acting at the British Theatre Association in England and at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. At 21, he founded and directed the first theater company in New York City, the Malaparte Theater Company, providing young artists with a space to develop their craft.”

Lucca won’t be Hawke’s only stopover in Italy. He touches down in Venice early next month for a master class at the 81st Venice Film Festival. The 2024 Lucca Film Festival runs Sept. 21-23.

The Lucca Film Festival has previously honored the likes of Oliver Stone, David Lynch, Susan Sarandon, Isabelle Huppert, Rutger Hauer, George Romero, Paolo Sorrentino and Willem Dafoe.

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