Terry Gilliam highly acclaimed at the International Film Festival of Marrakech

The famous American director Terry Gilliam received a poignant tribute on Tuesday evening as part of the 11th edition of International Film Festival of Marrakech (Marrakech International Film Festival).

To honor the impressive career of  the American director, he was awarded the Star Award of the festival hands of the president of the IFFM  jury  by Emir Kusturica, amid the applause of many lovers of the 7th art,  who welcomed his unbridled love of adventure and imagination.

"It's a great honour to receive this award," Gilliam said, before recalling that he has fond memories of Morocco, where he had filmed sequences from his film "Time Bandits",  in Ouarzazate.

Born in 1940 in Minneapolis, Terry Gilliam began his career as a designer in 1969 before joining the British comedy troupe Monty Python. He then went on  to television appearances with especially popular programs   before turning to  cult films such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983).

In 1977 Gillam made Jabberwocky, which revealed the filmmaker's whimsical side,  he then continued with Time Bandits (1981) and especially Brazil (1985), a real social satire and a visionary work that many consider his greatest film.

 His films are full of fantasy as evidenced by  The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), the contemporary fable Fisher King (1991), where he addresses urban poverty and the future with  The 12 Monkeys
(1995), he offered the leading role to Bruce Willis.

Later, Gilliam changes register with the big-screen adaptation of the novel by Hunter S. Thompson in the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), an epic iwhich is both comic and horrific, led by Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro.

In 2005, the director iwas interested in the fate of the Brothers Grimm incarnated on screen  by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger in 2005.

After a cool reaction by the Hollywood machine, he turned to a more intimate project: the disturbing tale  of Tideland he described himself mixing between psychosis and Alice in Wonderland.

Particularly dark, the film was not a success but the director was not discouraged however, and decided to give free rein to his imagination with the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009).