Oscar-winning actor Robert De Niro to receive an honorary Palme d'Or in Cannes
In 1976, De Niro starred in two films – Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 – that premiered in competition at Cannes. Taxi Driver was an immediate sensation, and went home with the festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or.
Since then, De Niro has been a regular on the Croisette, returning with The King of Comedy in 1983, Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America in 1984 and Roland Joffe's The Mission in 1986. Joffe's film also won the Palme, making De Niro the rare actor to star in two Palme d'Or winners.
Though De Niro helps run his own film festival back in New York, the Tribeca Festival, he has remained a mainstay in Cannes. He presided over the jury in 2011 that selected Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life for the Palme. Most recently, he and Scorsese returned to premiere Killers of the Flower Moon in 2023.
"I have such close feelings for Festival de Cannes," De Niro said when his honorary Palme d'Or was announced last month. "Especially now when there's so much in the world pulling us apart, Cannes brings us together – storytellers, filmmakers, fans, and friends. It's like coming home."
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- Straits Times
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Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox Film-maker Eric Khoo put Singapore on the international film map in 1995 with his debut feature Mee Pok Man. SINGAPORE – Film aficionados will agree that local director and screenwriter Eric Khoo single-handedly put modern Singapore cinema on the international map with his seminal drama Mee Pok Man (1995), followed by another classic, 12 Storeys (1997). Both movies – the first about a noodle seller and his fascination with a disillusioned prostitute, and the latter a social commentary about a group of ordinary Singaporeans living in the same HDB block – blazed a trail, being screened at more than 60 film festivals worldwide. Khoo did Singapore proud when 12 Storeys became the first made-in-Singapore film to officially participate in the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, thanks to its nomination in the Un Certain Regard section. Through the years, he continued to garner attention and awards at the prestigious event. 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