Richard Linklater

Filmmaker Richard Linklater will be the recipient of the 2014 Founder’s Directing Award at the 57th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 24 – May 8), honoring the quintessentially American director’s expansive body of work and celebrating the upcoming release BOYHOOD, his groundbreaking new film. The award will be presented to Linklater at Film Society Awards Night, Thursday May 1. 

Linklater will also be publicly honored at An Evening with Richard Linklater at the Castro Theatre, Friday May 2, 7:00 pm. An onstage interview and a selection of clips from his notable directing career will be followed by a screening of BOYHOOD. Filming over the course of 12 years, Linklater and his cast depict a young man’s journey from a 6-year-old boy to 18-year-old college freshman. The resulting film “has no precedent” according to the Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy. “Never has the long arc of the journey from childhood to college been portrayed as cohesively and convincingly as Richard Linklater has done.”

“Richard Linklater is one of our country’s great creative minds,” said San Francisco Film Society Executive Director Noah Cowan. “His curiosity about cinema’s endless possibilities and his landmark collaborations with many of the world’s most interesting actors mark him as a profound and important force in our medium. It is our great honor to welcome him here to accept the 2014 Founder’s Directing Award.”  

BOYHOOD directed by Richard Linklater

One of the most profound and prolific American independent filmmakers of the last 20 years, Richard Linklater first burst onto the scene with his scrappy time capsule of Austin weirdness, Slacker (SFIFF, 1991). Since then Linklater’s work has graced international film festival lineups, helped launch the careers of a number of prominent movie stars (Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Parker Posey) and garnered multiple Oscar nominations. BOYHOOD is his 18th feature film.