His new film Monte to be screened out of competition.

Amir Naderi

Iranian director Amir Naderi (Vegas, Manhattan by Numbers) is to receive the Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker award of the 73rd Venice International Film Festival(August 31-Sept 10), dedicated to a personality who has made an original contribution to innovation in contemporary cinema.

The prize has previously been awarded to filmmakers and actors including Takeshi Kitano, Abbas Kiarostami, Al Pacino and, last year, Brian De Palma.

Naderi will be awarded the prize in a ceremony to be held September 5 in the Sala Grande (Palazzo del Cinema), before the world premiere of his new film Monte, which plays out of competition.

The film - shot on location in Italy in the mountains of the Alto Adige and Friuli regions - is set in 1350 and tells the story of a man who makes every attempt to bring the sunlight into his village, where his family is barely able to survive because of the prevailing darkness.

Monte was one of the projects selected for the Venice Gap-Financing Market in 2014, a programme launched by the Venice Production Bridge.

Naderi has been among the most influential figures of New Iranian Cinema since the 1970s. He entered the international spotlight with Tangsir (1974), Entezar (1974), awarded the Jury Prize at the Cannes children’s film festival, The Runner (1985) and Ab, Bad, Khak  (1989), which both won the Golden Montgolfiere at Three Continents Festival in Nantes.

The first prominent Iranian director to move abroad in the mid ’80s, Naderi’s US films include Sound Barrier, which won the Roberto Rossellini Critics’ Prize at the Rome Film Festival in 2005, and Vegas: Based on a True Story, which premiered in competition at Venice in 2008.

Cut was shot in Japan and premiered as the opening film of Venice’s Orizzonti section in 2011.

Monte, starring Andrea Sartoretti and Claudia Potenza, marks the first film by Naderi to be set and directed in Italy.