The passing of Robert Redford

The President, the General Manager, the Head of the Historical Archive, the Artistic Director of the Cinema Department, the Board of Directors and La Biennale di Venezia as a whole join the worlds of cinema and culture in mourning the death of the great actor, director and producer Robert Redford, the unforgettable Hollywood giant and exceptional tireless advocate forindependent cinema, as the founder of the Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival.

La Biennale di Venezia is proud to have awarded him the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the Venice International Film Festival in 2017, conferred to him and to his lifelong colleague Jane Fonda, who received the same Lifetime Achievement award, in Sala Grande of the Palazzo del Cinema where they were honoured with a seemingly endless standing ovation. The awards ceremony was followed by a screening of the film Our Souls at Night, directed by Ritesh Batra and starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.

On that occasion, the Artistic Director of the Venice International Film Festival, Alberto Barbera, stated: «Actor, director, producer, environmentalist, founder and soul of that brilliant experiment in film called Sundance - whether in front or behind the camera, advocating for the cause of independent cinema or the cause of our planet, Robert Redford has led us through almost five decades of compelling filmmaking and advocacy with a combination of rigor, intelligence and grace that is virtually unsurpassed».

Robert Redford premiered the last film he directed, The Company You Keep, at the Venice International Film Festival in 2012.

With films he starred in, Robert Redford appeared on the screens of Biennale Cinema in The Making of ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ by Robert Crawford Jr. in 1970, The Candidate by Michael Ritchie in 1972, Legal Eagles by Ivan Reitman in 1986.