Paul Schrader

American director and screenwriter Paul Schrader, who won the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2022, is the first international guest announced for the Lucca Film Festival, which will take place from September 21 to 29, 2024. On September 26, Paul Schrader will hold a public masterclass at the Cinema Astra, attended by film students from various Italian universities, and the following day he will receive the Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The festival will feature a retrospective of many of his films.

Schrader began his career as a screenwriter for successful Martin Scorsese films such as Raging Bull and Taxi Driver. He made his directorial debut with Blue Collar, starring Richard Pryor and Harvey Keitel. In 1979, he directed Hardcore, a bleak and desperate thriller set in the adult film industry. His most well-known film to date is American Gigolo, a sophisticated thriller starring Richard Gere. Following the success of American Gigolo, Schrader decided to remake Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People (1982) with Nastassja Kinski. In 1992, he directed Light Sleeper with Willem Dafoe, and in 1997, Affliction, which received critical acclaim. He participated in the Venice International Film Festival in 2013 with The Canyons, written by Bret Easton Ellis and starring Lindsay Lohan, and in 2017 with First Reformed, a psychological religious drama starring Ethan Hawke. This film earned Schrader his first nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the 2018 Academy Awards and is the first of a trilogy that continues with The Card Counter (2021) featuring Oscar Isaac and Tiffany Haddish, and Master Gardener (2022) starring Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver. At the most recent Cannes Film Festival, he presented Oh Canada, which he wrote and directed, starring Richard Gere and Uma Thurman. The film is distributed in Italy by Be Water and Medusa.