Mike Leigh at the Venice Film Festival last September. The director is the guest of honour at this year’s Luxembourg Film Festival. Andrea Raffin / Shutterstock

Mike Leigh at the Venice Film Festival last September. The director is the guest of honour at this year’s Luxembourg Film Festival. Andrea Raffin / Shutterstock

Hot on the heels of the all-too-brief Luxembourg release of his latest film “Peterloo”, iconic director Mike Leigh will return to the grand duchy in March to give a masterclass and receive a lifetime achievement award.

Leigh was last in Luxembourg in October 2015 to direct his acclaimed version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance” at the Grand Théâtre. During his stay he was also the guest of the Cinémathèque for a special "in conversation" evening with its director Claude Bertemes.

Leigh will return to the Cinémathèque to give a masterclass on Saturday 16 March with Michel Ciment, writer, film critic and editor of the French film magazine Positif. That evening he will be at the festival’s prize ceremony at Kinepolis to receive his lifetime achievement award. Previous recipients of the award have been American actor Ray Liotta in 2017 and German director Volker Schlöndorff in 2018.

Leigh made his mark in the 1970s in the UK with a string of bleak but bitingly satirical television plays including “Nuts In May” and “Abigail’s Party” (a theatrical version of which was performed at the Grand Théâtre last autumn). His big screen credits as director include the brilliant “Naked”, for which he won best director at Cannes, “Secrets and Lies”, which won the Palme d’Or, “Vera Drake”, which won best film in Venice, and the Oscar- and Bafta-nominated “Mr. Turner”.