Yesterday evening, British director Danny Boyle (b. 1956) received the Joseph Plateau Honorary Award at the 2026 Film Fest Gent in Belgium. Boyle, director of acclaimed films such as “Trainspotting” (1996), “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008), and “127 Hours” (2010), attended the screening of his latest film, “Ink,” at Film Fest Gent. This compelling biopic depicts how media mogul Rupert Murdoch, powerfully portrayed by Guy Pearce, changed the British media landscape forever through his acquisition of The Sun.
Danny Boyle is known for his visually dynamic, energetic, and eclectic filmmaking style, characterised by rapid editing, immersive soundtracks, and raw human emotion. He achieved international fame in the 1990s with the cult classic “Trainspotting” (1996), based on the novel by Irvine Welsh. He soon demonstrated his versatility by effortlessly switching between diverse genres: from the adventure thriller “The Beach” (2000), starring a young Leonardo DiCaprio, to the post-apocalyptic horror hit “28 Days Later” (2002) and the claustrophobic drama “127 Hours” (2010). He achieved his greatest commercial and artistic success with “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008), which won eight Oscars, including Best Director. Boyle’s work is distinguished by visual innovation and a predilection for stories about characters forced to push their limits under extreme pressure.
The Joseph Plateau Honorary Award is presented to festival guests who have made a special contribution to the art of filmmaking. The award itself is a replica of Professor Joseph Plateau’s phenakistoscope, a device that allowed him to set a series of sequential drawings continuously ‘in motion’. The phenakistiscope helped lay the foundation for the concept of moving images and, by extension, filmmaking itself.
Previous recipients of the Joseph Plateau Honorary Award are actors, actresses, film directors, producers, composers and other notable international film professionals: 1991 André Delvaux, Michel Legrand 1992 Alain Cuny, Carl Davis 1993 Robert Altman, Philippe Sarde 1994 John Hurt, Jean-Claude Petit, Henri Storck 1995 James Earl Jones, Gabrielle Claes 1997 Gina Lollobrigida, Sydney Pollack, David Puttnam 1998 Peter Ustinov, Robert Wise, Alain Resnais, Shohei Imamura, Elmer Bernstein 1999 Sandra Bullock, Stanley Donen, Irwin Winkler, Peter Greenaway, Bonnie Arnold 2000 Morgan Freeman, Hans Zimmer 2001 Roger Corman, Richard Zanuck, Lili Fini Zanuck, Roy E. Disney, Bertrand Tavernier, Gabriel Yared 2002 Juliette Binoche, Jeanne Moreau, Jean Reno, Blair Underwood, Hanna Schygulla, Roland Verhavert, Jan Van Raemdonck 2003 Tony Curtis 2004 Richard Attenborough 2005 Mike Leigh, Alan Ladd Jr., Nand Buyl, Zbigniew Preisner 2006 Agnès Varda 2007 Kathleen Turner, Danny Glover, Walter Hill 2008 Woody Harrelson, Richard Jenkins, Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald 2009 Kevin Costner, Andy Garcia, Claude Miller 2010 Catherine Deneuve, Paul Greengrass, Dirk Brossé 2011 Isabelle Huppert, Norman Jewison, Chris Lomme, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne 2012 Emmanuelle Riva, Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani 2013 Paul Schrader, István Szabó, Jacques Debrulle 2015 Christopher Plummer, Alan Parker 2016 Ken Loach, Jeremy Thomas 2017 Greta Scacchi, Johan Leysen, Pierre Drouot 2018 Dirk Impens 2019 Geraldine Chaplin, Agustí Villaronga 2020 Viggo Mortensen 2021 Harry Kümel, Andrea Arnold 2022 Raoul Servais, Céline Sciamma 2023 Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Terence Davies 2024 Emily Watson, Michel Khleifi 2025 Theresa Russell
