Peter Weir, the director of Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show, Picnic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli, was presented with the inaugural lifetime achievement award from the Australian Film Television and Radio School on Wednesday night.
At an event hosted by Sydney film festival, the AFTRS council chair, Rachel Perkins, called the now-retired 81-year-old director and screenwriter “the greatest film-maker this country has produced”.
Perkins, who founded and co-directed the film production company Blackfella Films from 1992 until 2022, said: “As Aboriginal people, we felt seen in your films.”
Weir was able to “define what we call Australian culture”, Perkins said of the themes of mateship and anti-authoritarianism in 1981’s Gallipoli.
It was a unanimous decision to present AFTRS’ first lifetime achievement award to Weir for his “global influence on craft, form and storytelling”.
In his 43-year career, Weir made 13 films, including pivotal works in Australian new wave cinema such as the 1977 thriller The Last Wave starring David Gulpilil, before working in Hollywood on Dead Poets Society and The Truman Show.
“As film-makers, you move from picture to picture and you don’t look back much,” Weir said in his acceptance speech. “Now is the time of my life where I do look back, so something like this is a very lovely thank you of a kind. I appreciate it very much.”
Weir, who retired in 2024, was presented with a lifetime achievement award at Venice film festival the same year, and he was the first Australian film-maker to be awarded an honorary Oscar in 2022. Last night he said it was “quite overwhelming” to receive such praise in his home city.
After the presentation, Weir joined the actor Rob Carlton for the annual Ian McPherson lecture, in which he told the audience he had initially turned down the opportunity to direct the dystopian comedy The Truman Show.
Weir said when he couldn’t stop thinking about the script, written by New Zealand-born Andrew Niccol, he had called his agent back to rescind his initial refusal. Luckily, his agent was waiting for Weir to change his mind, saying: “I know how you work.”
He also talked about Robin Williams, whom he bumped into on a beach in Sydney’s northern beaches a year before they made Dead Poets Society together. Weir recalled inviting Williams back to his lawn to have coffee in their swimmers, and saying to the actor: “Wouldn’t it be great to do something together?”
Weir spoke of taking a risk in casting Linda Hunt as a man in The Year of Living Dangerously; his passion for music; being moved by the power of Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers; and the “mercurial, uncontrollable, unknowable” process of film-making.
The AFTRS lifetime achievement award will be presented each year to individuals whose career‑long achievements have made a lasting contribution to the screen or audio industries.
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Sydney film festival runs until 14 June
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