Danny Boyle receives Joseph Plateau Award at Film Fest Gent
Danny Boyle
British director Danny Boyle is known for his visually dynamic, energetic, and eclectic filmmaking style, characterised by rapid editing, immersive soundtracks, and raw human emotion. He achieved international fame in the 1990s with the cult classic Trainspotting (1996), based on the novel by Irvine Welsh. He soon demonstrated his versatility by effortlessly switching between diverse genres: from the adventure thriller The Beach (2000), starring a young Leonardo DiCaprio, to the post-apocalyptic horror hit 28 Days Later (2002) and the claustrophobic drama 127 Hours (2010). He achieved his greatest commercial and artistic success with Slumdog Millionaire (2008), which won eight Oscars, including Best Director. Boyle’s work is distinguished by visual innovation and a predilection for stories about characters forced to push their limits under extreme pressure.
Joseph Plateau Honorary Award
The Joseph Plateau Honorary Award is presented to festival guests who have made a special contribution to the art of filmmaking. The award itself is a replica of Professor Joseph Plateau’s phenakistoscope, a device that allowed him to set a series of sequential drawings continuously ‘in motion’. The phenakistiscope helped lay the foundation for the concept of moving images and, by extension, filmmaking itself. Past recipients include Emily Watson (2024), Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (2023), Céline Sciamma (2022), Raoul Servais (2022), Andrea Arnold (2021), Viggo Mortensen (2020), Isabelle Huppert (2011), Agnès Varda (2006), and Morgan Freeman (2000).
Read the full list of award winners here.
Ink
Rupert Murdoch laid the foundations for his media empire in Australia, but major growth followed in the United Kingdom with the acquisition of The Sun in 1969. He transformed it into a tabloid and, together with editor-in-chief Larry Lamb, focused on sensationalism and sex, such as the "Page 3 girl," a full-page photograph of a young, topless woman. All of this, along with a notorious kidnapping that threw England into turmoil at the time, features in Danny Boyle’s Ink, which boasts a stellar cast: Guy Pearce as Murdoch, Jack O’Connell as Lamb, and Claire Foy as Davies, a fictional Sun journalist. Ink, the opening film of the Venice Film Festival, is an awards contender.
