Ischia Global Film & Music Fest: Brendan Fraser, Rob Marshall and Diane Warren Set for Top Honors

Newly minted best actor Oscar winner Brendan Fraser is headed to the Gulf of Naples, Italy, for the Ischia Global Film & Music Festival, where he will be honored as Global Actor of the Year, the fest announced on Saturday.

“We are proud to welcome to Ischia Brendan Fraser, a great artist and man who symbolizes rebirth and redemption,” festival founder and producer Pascal Vicedomini said in a statement.

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Fraser, who garnered career-best reviews last year for The Whale and is associated with another awards hopeful this year, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, will be feted on July 15.

On that same date, the fest will present Rob Marshall, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker most recently behind this year’s live-action version of The Little Mermaid, with its Luchino Visconti Legend Award. Diane Warren, the hit-machine songwriter who collected an honorary Oscar last year and hopes to finally be awarded a competitive this season for her Flamin’ Hot tune ‘The Fire Inside,’ will receive the William Walton Legend Award. (The iconic music producer Clive Davis will be present the latter honor.)

Other notables who will be on the ground at the fest: directors Bille August, Catherine Hardwicke and Michael Radford; actors Christopher Abbott, Austin Abrams, Clara McGregor, Tim Blake Nelson, Lewis Pullman and Alex Wolff; producers Avi Lerner and John Lesher; writers Bobby Moresco and Nick Vallelonga; singer Sofia Carson, who performed Warren’s nominated song “Applause” at the Oscars earlier this year; and many Italian artists.

The event’s 21st edition will run July 9-16 and will be ceremonially presided over by filmmaker Jim Sheridan, producer/activist Trudie Styler and singer/songwriter Tony Renis, all veterans of the fest. It will also feature screenings (some two hundred titles, free to the public, including the opening night world premiere of the revenge-thriller Double Soul, the last film of the late actor Julian Sands); master classes (including one taught by acting coach Bernard Hiller); and panel discussions (on subjects like the impact of artificial intelligence on culture).

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