British actress Emily Watson will receive a lifetime achievement award at Spain’s San Sebastian film festival, organisers said on Friday.
The 48-year-old Breaking the Waves star will collect the festival’s Donostia award at a ceremony on September 25 in “recognition of her prestigious film career,” they said in a statement.
Critics have praised Watson’s performance in her latest movie, Icelandic director Baltasar Karmakur’s Everest, which opened the Venice film festival on Wednesday.
The actress, who was awarded Britain’s Order of the British Empire honour earlier this year for services to drama, plays a logistics coordinator on a disastrous trek along Mount Everest in the drama.
Past recipients of the Donostia award — named after the Basque word for the coastal town of San Sebastian — include Meryl Streep, Richard Gere, Ian McKellen and Robert De Niro.
The 63rd San Sebastian film festival, the highest-profile movie event in the Spanish-speaking world, takes place from September 18-26.
The festival was originally intended to honour Spanish language films but has established itself as one of the most important movie festivals in the world.
It hosted the world premiere of Alfred Hitchcock’s spy thriller North by Northwest in 1959 and Woody Allen’s Melinda and Melinda in 2004.
