ACTOR Adrien Brody will receive this year’s top honor from the Locarno Film Festival. He will be on hand to accept the prize, the Leopard Club Award, on Aug. 4.

Brody was the youngest actor to win the Academy Award for best actor for his performance in Roman Polanski’s Holocaust drama “The Pianist” (2002) at the age of 29.

“Adrien Brody has worked with some of the great U.S. directors, from Coppola to Wes Anderson, from Malick to Soderbergh, always displaying the adaptability and technical skills that put him at ease in a remarkable spectrum of performing registers,” said Locarno’s artistic director Carlo Chatrian, adding that the actor’s performance in “The Pianist” “won him a lasting place in movie-lovers’ hearts, not so much for the Academy Award it brought him, as for the way he brought to life a character who is both a man like all of us and the symbol of a tragedy which we must constantly recall.”

As part of its tribute to Brody, the festival will host a public screening of “The Pianist” at the Piazza Grande, Europe’s largest outdoor screening venue. Brody will also meet with attendees to discuss his career.

He next stars in Paul Solet’s “De Niro.”(SD-Agencies)