Darren Aronofsky will be awarded the honorary Pardo d’Onore award during this year’s Locarno Film Festival, which runs from August 5 to 15. 

Aronofsky will pick up the award on August 14 at the festival’s outdoor cinema at the Piazza Grande and present two of his features, The Fountain (2006) and Mother! (2017).

Previous Pardo d’Onore honorees include Bernardo Bertolucci, Ken Loach, Jean-Luc Godard, Abbas Kiarostami, Terry Gilliam, William Friedkin, Alain Tanner, Jia Zhang-ke, Leos Carax, Werner Herzog, Agnès Varda, Todd Haynes, John Waters, John Landis, Kelly Reichardt, Harmony Korine, Jane Campion, and Alexander Payne.

Locarno Artistic Director Giona A. Nazzaro described Aronofsky as “an auteur who has made the sheer force of creativity, invention, and audacity his trademark.” 

“Darren Aronofsky has never failed to challenge conventions and expectations, nor attempted simply to please either the public or the industry,” Nazzaro said. 

“As a filmmaker, he has succeeded in creating an unmistakable body of work, such that the adjective ‘Aronofskian’ is now used to characterise a deeply personal and unconventional style that nonetheless moves freely between different genres and approaches – in his specific case anchored in those themes and obsessions that he has tirelessly explored: faith, motherhood, the conflicts with authoritarian father figures, and the challenges inherent in the creation of societies. Aronofsky embodies the pleasure of cinema as risk and constant challenge. Celebrating his work in Locarno, welcoming him to the Piazza Grande, is a tribute to creativity’s essential beauty, challenges, and necessity.”