Join Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actress Patricia Clarkson as we honor her with the Festival’s prestigious Precious Gem Award in recognition of her incredible acting achievements.

Ms. Clarkson will be attending the award presentation along with participating in an extended onstage conversation about her film career preceding the screening of Sally Potter’s The Party.

Clarkson won the 2019 Golden Globe for her role in Jean-Marc Vallée’s HBO mini-series Sharp Objects, received an Oscar nomination for her pivotal role in Peter Hedges’ Pieces of April (2003) and won 2 Emmy Awards for her work in Alan Ball’s Six Feet Under. In a career spanning more than 30 years of work, Clarkson’s oeuvre is remarkable for her versatility in working with both top independent cinema artists such as Tom McCarthy, Todd Haynes, and Isabel Coixet and popular big-budget mainstream work for directors Martin Scorsese, Brian de Palma, Clint Eastwood and in The Maze Runner trilogy.

In Sally Potter’s fun and funny romp The Party, Patricia Clarkson steals the show with her performance as April — a character full of brains, sheer sexiness and brilliant indifference. Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas) is hosting an intimate gathering of friends in her London home to celebrate her political ascension, while her husband, Bill (Timothy Spall), seems preoccupied. Janet’s acerbic best friend, April, arrives and others follow, some with their own dramatic news to share, but an announcement by Bill provokes a series of revelations that gradually unravel the sophisticated soiree, and a night that began with champagne may end badly in this dark comedy of sex, class and politics.