Rutger Hauer to Get Lucca Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award

The Dutch star will be celebrated at the Tuscan film festival in the same year ‘Blade Runner’ was set.

Rutger Hauer is set to receive the Lucca Film Festival lifetime achievement award this April.

The 75-year-old Dutch actor will have a packed schedule at the Tuscany-based event. In addition to an award ceremony, the festival will show a retrospective of films from his long career. Hauer will teach a master class dedicated to future filmmakers as well as serve on the international jury for the festival's main competition.

Hauer, who began his career in 1969 in the German TV series Floris, has more than 150 credits to his name. In his most famous role, he appeared as renegade replicant leader Roy Batty in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner in 1982.

He made his Hollywood debut opposite Sylvester Stallone in Nighthawks in 1981. And he has starred in iconic films including The Hitcher, Ladyhawke, The Osterman Weekend, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Batman Begins.

Hauer won a Golden Globe in 1988 for the TV film Escape from Sobibor. He is also a known environmentalist and AIDS awareness activist.

The festival, which frequently combines art, music and installations, is also planning a special night event dedicated to Hauer and Blade Runner.

The performance event, “Tears in Rain,” will recreate a futuristic setting of the film throughout the Tuscan village, with Hauer appearing alongside actors in cyberpunk costumes and a live performance of the soundtrack by Vangelis.

“In the future imagined by Philip Dick, the story of the film Blade Runner is set in the year 2019 and it’s extraordinarily similar to our present,” said festival curators Stefano Giuntini and Cristina Puccinelli. “Therefore the idea is to celebrate the year of Blade Runner.”

Lucca Film Festival takes place April 13-21. As previously announced, Joe Dante will also be honored with a lifetime achievement award. The festival is directed by Nicola Borrelli and supported by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio of Lucca.