British actor and comedian John Cleese received the honorary lifetime achievement award at the Sarajevo Film Festival on Wednesday in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Cleese, best known as a member of the famous comedy team Monty Python’s Flying Circus, received a standing ovation from fans at the open-air venue where he gave an acceptance speech.
“I accept it not as a film person, but more as a comedian because I think at this time in world history, we’ve never needed comedians more,” Cleese said.
Cleese, 77, was part of a genre of university-educated comedians who took British audiences by storm in the 1970s with an irreverent, zany style of humour.
He went on to make several movies, including Life of Brian and A Fish Called Wanda.
The Sarajevo Film Festival began in 1995 during the siege of Sarajevo in the Bosnian War and has since evolved into a major film event in southeastern Europe.
A Georgian film about a woman struggling to reconcile family life and her passion for writing has been chosen as the best movie at the 23rd Sarajevo Film Festival.
Three-time Oscar-winning US filmmaker Oliver Stone and British actor John Cleese were also awarded with lifetime achievement awards during a weeklong festival which has shown 235 films from 54 countries to an audience of about 100,000.
An international jury chaired by Mexican film-maker Michel Franco awarded Scary Mother, a debut movie by 27-year-old Georgian director Ana Urushadze, with the Heart of Sarajevo, the festival’s main award.
It described the film as “provocative and elegantly directed”.
This was the second time a Georgian film has triumphed in Sarajevo after In Bloom by directors Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gros won the main prize in 2013.
Romanian filmmaker Emanuel Parvu was awarded best director for his movie Meda, or the Not So Bright Side of Things, and Serban Pavlu won the best actor award for his role in the movie.
The best actress award went to Canadian actress Ornela Kapetani for her role in Daybreak, a debut feature by Albanian director Gentian Koci.
The Sarajevo Film Festival, founded as an act of defiance towards the end of the 1992-95 siege during the Bosnian war, has grown into the largest industry platform for the region stretching from Austria to Russia and Turkey.
