Spanish actress Victoria Abril is to be honoured with the Excellence Award at the 66th Locarno Film Festival (Aug 7-17).

Abril, muse to directors Vincente Aranda and Pedro Almodóvar, will receive the award at the Piazza Grande on August 10.

The festival audience will have an opportunity to participate in a conversation with the actress, who made her debut in 1977 with a role in Aranda’s Sex Change

Two films will be screened in tribute to Abril: Almodóvar’s Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990) and Baltasar Kormákur’s 101 Reykjavik (2000).

“With the sunny exuberance that has characterized many of the roles she has played that have so captured the public’s imagination, Victoria Abril arrives in Locarno to add a splash of colour to a festival that aims to be a home for the full range of cinema,” said artistic director Carlo Chatrain.

Previous recipients of the award include Susan Sarandon, John Malkovich, Michel Piccoli, Toni Servillo, Isabelle Huppert and, in 2012, Charlotte Rampling and Gael García Bernal.

This year’s other Excellence Award recipient is Sir Christopher Lee.