Italy's Marco Bellocchio is to to get a career Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival on July 6-17, organizers said Tuesday, joining Jodie Foster as this year's two recipients of the honour. Bellocchio, 81, whose films include Fists in the Pocket, The Prince of Homburg, The Nanny, The Religion Lesson, Win, Dormant Beauty and The Traitor, will receive the award along with Foster on the final evening of the fest.

The cult and engagé director will also present his latest work, Marx Can Wait, in the Cannes Premiere section of the fest. A friend of late cinema great Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bellocchio's other films include China is Near (1967), Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina (Slap the Monster on Page One) (1972), Nel Nome del Padre (In the name of the Father - a satire on a Catholic boarding school that shares affinities with Lindsay Anderson's If....) (1972), Victory March (1976), A Leap in the Dark (1980), Henry IV (1984), Devil in the Flesh (1986), and My Mother's Smile (2002), which told the story of a wealthy Italian artist, a 'default-Marxist and atheist', who suddenly discovers that the Vatican is proposing to make his detested mother a saint.