The Locarno Film Festival will present US director James Gray with its Pardo alla Carriera lifetime career award, honouring a body of work rooted in his upbringing in New York's Russian-Jewish community. The tribute coincides with a screening of Gray's latest film, "Paper Tiger," at the festival's outdoor Piazza Grande venue, reflecting his continued standing as one of American cinema's most distinctive voices.

Gray collected acclaim early, winning the Silver Lion at Venice for "Little Odessa" at just 25, and went on to build a career spanning crime dramas, family portraits and more recently science fiction and adventure films such as "Ad Astra" and "The Lost City of Z." He will receive the award on 9 August and present "Paper Tiger," which premiered at Cannes in May and stars Miles Teller and Adam Driver as brothers entangled with the Russian mob in 1980s Brooklyn; the film will also open the 64th New York Film Festival on 25 September. Locarno will additionally screen his earlier works "We Own the Night" (2007) and "Two Lovers" (2008) as part of the tribute, with artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro describing Gray as "the last great novelist of American cinema."