In honor of Jodie Foster’s five decades behind and in front of the camera, the 5th annual Athena Film Festival (Feb. 5–8) will salute the Oscar-winning actress and director with its Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award. Foster will be honored during a ceremony on Saturday, Feb. 7 at Barnard College in Manhattan, where the festival will take place.
Previous recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award include Sherry Lansing and Gale Anne Hurd.
Foster won two Academy Awards for her performances in The Silence of the Lambs and The Accused. She is the director of Little Man Tate, Home for the Holidays, The Beaver, episodes of House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, and is scheduled to begin shooting Money Monster, starring George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Jack O’Connell.
“It is truly an honor to receive the Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award at the Athena Film Festival, which celebrates the power, creativity, and leadership of women in the entertainment industry,” commented Foster. “These are values I share deeply with the festival and I am thrilled to be recognized amongst my colleagues and peers.”
“We are privileged to celebrate the career of such an inspirational and talented woman this year at the Athena Film Festival,” said Melissa Silverstein, co-founder and Artistic Director of the Athena Film Festival and founder of Women and Hollywood. “Jodie Foster is a trailblazer in the industry, and since the beginning of her career has broken down barriers for female filmmakers and actresses. We look forward to celebrating her amongst our other 2015 awardees.”
Previously announced awardees at the 2015 Athena Film
Festival include Sheila Nevins, President of HBO Documentary Films, Gina
Prince-Bythewood, director, writer and producer behind films such as Love & Basketball, The Secret Life of Bees, and Beyond the Lights, and Cathy
Schulman, Academy Award-winning producer, President of Mandalay Pictures,
and President of Women in Film, known for films including Crash, The Illusionist, Darfur
Now, and Bernie.
