artnewspress : Locarno will screen ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ and ‘Million Dollar Baby’ in honor of the two-time Oscar winner.
Two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank will be honored at the 2019 Locarno International Film Festival with a lifetime achievement award.
Swank will receive the festival’s Leopard Club Award, given to “a major film personality whose work has made a lasting impact on the collective imagination.”
Making the announcement Wednesday, Lili Hinstin, Locarno’s new artistic director, called Swank “an actress whose roles and life story are emblematic of female strength and tenacity.”
Swank will attend Locarno to receive the award, which will be presented at the Swiss festival Aug. 9. Locarno will also screen the two films for which Swank won Oscars: Kimberly Peirce’s 1999 drama Boys Don’t Cry, in which Swank plays transgender teen Brandon Teena, who was raped and murdered in Nebraska in 1993; and Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby (2004), in which Swank plays a female boxer who, after a brutal fight, is left a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic.
Swank has recently attracted attention for her television roles. She starred on the FX drama Trust, and has been tapped to topline Netflix’s upcoming space drama series Away as Emma Green, an American astronaut who must leave her husband and teenage daughter behind to command an international space crew embarking on a treacherous mission. Swank began her career in television with a recurring role in the late 1990s on Beverly Hills, 90210.
But the actress hasn’t abandoned the big screen. Swank starred in Grant Sputore’s Australian sci-fi thriller I Am Mother, which Netflix picked for North America out of Sundance, and Blumhouse recently cast her in its upcoming politically charged action-thriller The Hunt.
Swank is repped by WME, Management 360 and Jackoway Austen.
The 2019 Locarno Film Festival runs Aug. 7-17.
