Richard Dreyfuss receives Fest honorary award

BELGRADE- Famous Oscar-winning US actor Richard Dreyfuss is the laureate of the honorary Beogradski pobednik award of the 43rd Fest International Film Festival for his contribution to cinematography.

The award was presented to Dreyfuss late Sunday at Sava centar by the festival's selector, director Mladen Djordjevic, before the screening of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Birdman - which won an Oscar this year - as the audience welcomed the US actor with a long, laud applause.

Also on Sunday, Dreyfuss was received by Belgrade Mayor Sinisa Mali, who said that he was very honoured by the celebrated actor's decision to accept an invitation to make a guest appearance at Fest and noted that his films are popular in Serbia.

Belgrade is a city with many cultural and historical landmarks, but is also recognisable due to people of great potential - I hope that you will recognise that potential and be an ambassador of our city, Mali told Dreyfuss.

Eastern Europe is a place where I feel as if I have come home, I know my origins, I know where I am from, and when I come to places such as Belgrade, Poland or Russia, I feel that the part of me that belongs here is alive, said the actor, whose ancestors hail from the region.

America consists of all of you and all of us; in America, we have a tendency to forget where we are from, but I have not forgotten that, he said.

Before the reception, Dreyfuss held a highly-attended press conference as part of the festival, at which he spoke about his career and modern cinematography, in which, he said, blockbusters dominate and the artistic form is dictated by modern technology.

The future of film is its past and it needs to return to what it was before the blockbusters, he noted....