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This year’s Zurich Film Festival’s Career Achievement Award goes to the entertainment legend Jerry Weintraub. The US American producer will celebrate his 75th birthday in Zurich and accept the Golden Eye in person on the same evening. He will also head a Public Zurich Master Class.

Jerry Weintraub is one of Hollywood’s last film producer greats. He began his career in the music industry working with such stars as Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan. He went on to become the world’s largest concert promoter of the 70s – a period when he also discovered and became the long-term manager of John Denver. Weintraub celebrated his first big hit as a film producer in 1975 with Robert Altman’s NASHVILLE.

KARATE KID is amongst his most commercially successful films, it went on to become one of the most profitable franchises of the 80s. In OCEAN’S ELEVEN (2001), OCEAN’S TWELVE (2004) and OCEAN’S THIRTEEN (2007), all directed by Steven Soderbergh, he formed some of the greatest stars of our time, including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts and Al Pacino. The OCEAN franchise raked in more than a billion dollars at the Box Office.

Jerry Weintraub is currently working on a film about the homosexual pianist and entertainer Liberace (1919-1987). The film is directed by Steven Soderbergh and stars Michael Douglas and Matt Damon in the lead roles.