Martin Scorsese will receive the 14th annual Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, SBIFF organizers announced on Monday.
The award will be presented on Nov. 14 at the Ritz Carlton Bacara in Santa Barbara during a black-tie fundraising dinner benefiting the festival’s year-round programs.
Scorsese is expected to be in the thick of this year’s awards race with “The Irishman,” his upcoming Netflix film starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci. Earlier this year Netflix also released Scorsese’s documentary-style Bob Dylan film “Rolling Thunder Revue.”
Scorsese will become the second full-time director to receive the award, after Quentin Tarantino in 2009. Actor-directors De Niro and Warren Beatty have also won the award, which typically goes to an actor or actress.
Apart from “The Irishman,” which will premiere at the New York Film Festival in late September, Scorsese’s other films include “Mean Streets,” “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “Goodfellas,” “Gangs of New York,” “Hugo,” “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “The Departed,” the only film of his to win the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director.
Other past recipients of the Kirk Douglas Award include Hugh Jackman, Judi Dench, Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas and Harrison Ford. Tarantino and De Niro are the only recipients who have landed Oscar nominations for their work during the year in which they received the SBIFF honor.
The Kirk Douglas Award gala will take place two months before the start of the 2020 Santa Barbara International Film Festival, which will run from Jan. 15-25 in the coastal town 100 miles north of Los Angeles.