Paul Schrader receives the Stockholm Lifetime Achievement Award 2007
The 18th Stockholm International Film Festival honors director and screenwriter Paul Schrader with the Stockholm Lifetime Achievement Award. Paul Schrader will visit Stockholm to accept the prestigious Bronze Horse in person.
Paul Schrader possesses a unique voice, which gives life to sharp, relentless characters in a modern city. Schrader’s images of an urban jungle are drawn with intellectual clarity, and he never hesitates to push his characters to their limits. With the linguistic brilliance of a screenwriter and a director’s eye for visuals, Paul Schrader has helped advance the cinematic medium for over three decades.

Due to his strictly Calvinist upbringing, Paul Schrader didn’t see his first feature film until he was well into his teens. After that, it didn’t take him very long to discover one of his main sources of inspiration: Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. Schrader went to graduate film school at UCLA, and had his breakthrough in 1976 with the script for Taxi Driver. He then co-wrote the script for Raging Bull (1980), which – just like Taxi Driver – was nominated for a Golden Globe.
The great success with Taxi Driver made way for Schrader’s career as a director. American Gigolo (1980), Cat People (1982) and Mishima – A Life in Four Chapters (1985) are some of the highlights of his career. In 1999, Paul Schrader received the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement from the Writers Guild of America (WGA).

In a special section dedicated to Paul Schrader, the festival will screen Schrader’s latest film The Walker (2007), starring Lauren Bacall (Stockholm Lifetime Achievement 2000), Woody Harrelson and Ned Beatty. The festival will also screen a selection of Schrader’s previous films in retrospective.

The Stockholm Lifetime Achievement Award is presented annually to honor and acknowledge a longstanding career and an outstanding achievement in cinema. The prestigious award, in the shape of a 16 lb Bronze Horse (the heaviest film award in the world), is a paraphrase on the Swedish Dala horse, designed by artist Fredrik Swärd.

The Stockholm Lifetime Achievement Award has previously been presented to actors and filmmakers like Roman Polanski, Lauren Bacall, David Lynch, Oliver Stone and Lasse Hallström.

Paul Schrader will visit Stockholm on November 17-19.