PARIS – Werner Herzog (“Grizzly Man”) will receive the Carrosse d’Or award at this year’s Directors Fortnight, the section which runs parallel to the Cannes Film Festival.

The Society of Film Directors (SRF), which brings together top French filmmakers, said it was honoring Herzog with the Carrosse d’Or to “pay tribute to [his] relentless energy and [his] great creativity,” as well as his “ability to juggle formats, production norms and systems, and to blur the lines between fiction and documentary, feature films and television, reason and madness.”

“We also pay homage to your leadership and your powerful capacity to pull in Hollywood stars as well as unknown people and amateurs, and to the way you impose your distinctive tone and vision, flouting moral conventions and political correctness,” the SFR added.

Launched in 2002 by SRF, the Carrosse d’Or recognizes a director each year for “the innovative qualities in his/her films, for his/her audacity and intransigence in direction and production,” stated the SFR.

Herzog’s latest film, the ecology-themed adventure thriller “Salt and Fire” (pictured above), starred Michael Shannon and Gael García Bernal.

Recent Carrosse d’Or honorees include Aki Kaurismaki, Jia Zhangke, Alain Resnais and Jane Campion.

The full lineup of Directors’ Fortnight will be unveiled in mid-April by its artistic director, Edouard Waintrop.