Tim Burton, the director of iconic films such as Batman, Beetlejuice, Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Alice in Wonderland, will receive the Lumière Award, a lifetime achievement prize, at the 2022 Lumière Film Festival. The event will take place between October 15 and October 23 in Lyon, France. More specifically Burton will get his recognition on Friday, October 21.

From the 1984 short film Frankenwennie to the 2019 live-action Disney adaptation of Dumbo, Burton is known for his signature combination of gothic horror and baroque comedy as well as a unique visual portrayal of his characters and settings. Burton is currently in post-production of Netflix’s Wednesday, his first TV series ever, which stars Jenna Ortegan as Wednesday Addams from the well-known Addams family.

According to the Lumière festival, Burton is “an artist who has given world cinema a universe of rare coherence with an unprecedented impact on popular culture.”

Burton’s cinema reveals his fascination with the monster, the marginal, the thorn in the side of an America corseted by its normativity and its endless residential suburbs. Skeletons, witches, goblins, ghosts, robots, anthropomorphic monkeys, catwomen and headless horsemen haunt the work of the filmmaker.

Previous Lumière award winners include Jane Campion, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Wong Kar-wai, and Quentin Tarantino.