Rome Film Fest: Martin Scorsese to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award

The Academy-Award winning directer will return to Rome, home of one of his biggest influences: Italian neorealist cinema.

Martin Scorsese will be honored with the 13th annual Rome Film Fest's lifetime achievement award. Italian director Paolo Taviani will present the honor.

The announcement was made in Rome on Tuesday by the festival's director Antonio Monda and the head of the Fondazione Cinema per Roma, Laura Delli Colli.

Scorsese has long had ties to Italy. His grandparents on both sides emigrated to the United States from Palermo, Sicily. In 1999, he produced a documentary on Italian filmmakers, My Voyage to Italy, and later directed Gangs of New York in 2002 in Rome's famed Cinecitta studios.

The director of Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino and The Wolf of Wall Street has been nominated for 12 Academy Awards over his career, and won for best director for The Departed.

His upcoming film The Irishman, about the slaying of Jimmy Hoffa, stars Jesse Plemons, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

“I am extremely honored to bestow the Lifetime Achievement Award to a Cinema Master," said Monda

"I am thrilled and moved to celebrate Martin Scorsese, not only as a great director," he continued, "but also for his extraordinary and priceless contribution to the rediscovery of great classic movies and, most of all, of Italian Cinema.”

The 13th Rome Film Fest takes place Oct. 18-28.