CAPTAIN PHILLIPS Director Paul Greengrass To Receive ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award

Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Paul Greengrass has been selected by the Board of Directors of the American Cinema Editors (ACE) to be honored with the organization’s prestigious ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award.

The award will be presented at the 64th Annual ACE Eddie Awards ceremony on Friday, February 7, 2014 in the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel, it was announced today by the ACE Board of Directors.

“Paul Greengrass is one of the most exciting filmmakers working in cinema today,” stated the ACE Board of Directors.  “A Greengrass film simply has its own signature – from the magnificent hand-held camera work, to his ability to engage audiences with riveting storytelling, his canon of work is bold and iconic.  His latest film, CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, is a masterwork yielding some of the finest filmmaking of the year that has already been honored with four Golden Globe® nominations including Best Director, nine Golden Globe® nominations including Best Director and a Directors Guild of America nomination for Best Director.   He maintains one of the foremost director-editor partnerships in the industry with Christopher Rouse, A.C.E., who has edited all of his features since 2002.  It is our pleasure to recognize him with the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year honor for his ongoing contribution to filmmaking at its finest.”

Greengrass joins a prestigious group of past ACE Golden Eddie honorees including Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Norman Jewison, Alexander Payne, James Cameron, Clint Eastwood, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Saul Zaentz and Stanley Donen, among others.

Paul Greengrass earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Director and a Best Original Screenplay nomination from the Writers Guild of America for his work on United 93. He also won BAFTA’s David Lean Award for Direction and Best Director awards from the London Film Critics’ Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the National Society of Film Critics, among others.  He was also nominated for a BAFTA for Best Director, and won Best Director honors at the London Film Critics’ Awards for his work on The Bourne Ultimatum; the film received three Academy Awards and two BAFTAs.

Greengrass has also directed the feature films Green Zone, The Bourne Supremacy, and Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday was honored with the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and the World Cinema Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, and Greengrass was named Best Director at the British Independent Film Awards. Greengrass has had a long and distinguished career in British television: he has written and directed TV films concerned with social and political issues, including “The Murder of Stephen Lawrence” (winner of BAFTA’s Best Single Drama Award in 2000 and the Special Jury Prize at the BANFF World Television Festival), as well as “The Fix,” “The One That Got Away,” and “Open Fire.” He produced and co-wrote the 2004 television film “Omagh,” set in the aftermath of a real IRA car-bombing that killed 29 people in Omagh, Northern Ireland. “Omagh” won BAFTA’s Best Single Drama Award in 2005 and was named Best Irish Film at the Irish Film and Television Awards (IFTA) in 2004.

Greengrass’s newest film, Captain Phillips, is a multi-layered examination of the 2009 hijacking of the U.S. container ship Maersk Alabama by a crew of Somali pirates.  It is — through director Paul Greengrass’s distinctive lens — simultaneously a pulse-pounding thriller, and a complex portrait of the myriad effects of globalization.  The film focuses on the relationship between the Alabama’s commanding officer, Captain Richard Phillips (two time Academy Award®-winner Tom Hanks), and the Somali pirate captain, Muse (Barkhad Abdi), who takes him hostage.  Phillips and Muse are set on an unstoppable collision course when Muse and his crew target Phillips’ unarmed ship; in the ensuing standoff, 145 miles off the Somali coast, both men find themselves at the mercy of forces beyond their control.  The screenplay was written by Billy Ray and was based upon the book, A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea, by Richard Phillips with Stephan Talty. The film is produced by Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti, and Michael De Luca.