Acclaimed artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel is to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at this year's Lucca Film Festival in Tuscany, the festival announced on Friday. Schnabel will attend the event in person, take part in a public masterclass and be present for a retrospective of his films, underlining his standing as one of the notable cross-over figures from the visual arts to cinema.

The award will be presented at a screening of his latest feature, In the Hand of Dante, a Netflix film adapted from Nick Tosches' 2002 novel with a cast including Oscar Isaac, Gal Gadot, Gerard Butler, Jason Momoa, Al Pacino and Martin Scorsese, which premiered out of competition at Venice last year. Schnabel first made his name as a painter in the 1980s New York art scene before turning to directing with Basquiat (1996), Before Night Falls (2000) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), the last of which won him Best Director at Cannes and a Golden Globe, and earned four Oscar nominations; later films include Miral (2010) and At Eternity's Gate (2018). Previous Lucca honorees include David Lynch, Paul Schrader and Alfonso Cuarón, and the 2026 festival runs from 26 September to 4 October.