The 65th Berlin film festival in February will award German film director Wim Wenders an honorary Golden Bear prize for lifetime achievement and showcase a retrospective of his work, organisers said Thursday.
Festival director Dieter Kosslick described the director of "Wings of Desire" and "Pina" as "one of the most noted contemporary auteurs" and said the event would pay tribute to his artistic diversity.
"His cross-genre and multifaceted work as a filmmaker, photographer and author has shaped our living memory of cinema, and continues to inspire other filmmakers," Kosslick said in a statement.
In the 1970s Wenders was part of a young generation of filmmakers who developed new aesthetic forms and moved into independent production and distribution, the festival said.
Still "one of cinema's great innovators", the 69-year-old, who was born in the western city of Duesseldorf, has made around 50 pictures since his feature film debut "Summer in the City" in 1970 and has worked across the world, it noted.
He won the top prize at the Cannes film festival with "Paris, Texas" in 1984, and three years later, scooped best director award for "Wings of Desire", a love letter to Berlin riven by the Wall.
His 1999 documentary "Buena Vista Social Club" featuring a group of veteran Cuban musicians brought Wenders his first Academy Award nomination.
And at the 2011 Berlin film festival, Wenders won rave reviews for "Pina", a 3-D documentary dedicated to his friend, the late German choreographer Pina Bausch, and later another Academy Award nomination.
The Berlin film festival, which will be held February 5 to 15, will present 10 films from among Wenders' feature and documentary repertoire and is Europe's first major cinema showcase of the year.