This year, Paul Schrader already knows he is a winner at the 79^th edition of the Venice Film Festival. Not that he is clairvoyant and has foreseen the jury’s decision about his latest directorial effort (Master Gardener is actually premiering out of competition), but rather, he has just received the Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award from the world’s oldest film festival.

Not bad for the former film critic of the Los Angeles Free Press. The Grand Rapids, Michigan, native, who has directed 22 films over his illustrious 50-year career, first established his name in Hollywood writing on such seminal films as Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, both of them under the watchful eye of Martin Scorsese. It would be the crime drama Blue Collar that gave Schrader his first shot behind the camera, eventually leading him to make such films as American Gigolo, Cat People, Light Sleeper, First Reformed, and last year’s The Card Counter, with the latter two both premiering at Venice as well.

Alberto Barbera, the festival’s director, noted that the honoree is a key figure of New Hollywood. “It is not an exaggeration to affirm that he is one of the most important American filmmakers of his generation, a director who is deeply influenced by European film and culture, and a stubbornly independent screenwriter who nonetheless knows how to work on commission and confidently move within the Hollywood system. The daring visual stylization that informs all his movies put him among the most up-to-date exponents of a type of cinema that is unreconciled and subtly investigates contemporaneity.”

It is ironic that for the 76-year-old filmmaker, this recognition comes at a decisive time for him creatively, as Master Gardener presents a major shift away from the portrayal of violence more typically explored in his movies.

“I’m moving away from it,” he stated to the HFPA during a press conference for the film. “I was part of a generation that came in riding the coattails of violence, and that time has come and gone. So, the notion of how and if we can participate in our own redemption evolves.”

In the film, Joel Edgerton plays Narvel Roth, a quiet man overseeing the garden estate of high society ice queen Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver). When he is asked to take care of Haverhill’s great niece Maya (Quintessa Swindell), the dark pasts of both characters come to the surface, heralding a major change for all involved.

Schrader sees Narvel’s plight as evoking the Christian notion of redemption through suffering. “I’m washed in the blood. I suffer as Christ suffers, and therefore I redeem. And if I can’t do that, I’ll shoot somebody.”

Edgerton was part of a generation that grew up influenced by actors who came to light in the 1970s, such as De Niro and Pacino, and claims that much of their success was due to the great writing available to them.

“Those performances are real, are as indelible and as interesting as they are because of the writing behind them, including, obviously, Paul’s, behind a few of those movies that helped shape my interest in becoming an actor. At that time, I was thinking about going to drama school, so there’s that, which I have him sort of quietly to thank for, in retrospect.”

While Venice is celebrating Schrader’s most current project, the receiving of the award has put the filmmaker into a nostalgic mood, and when queried which of his body of films might be his favorite, he initially refuses the challenge, but then rises up to accept.

“Directors like and dislike their children for different reasons,” he affirms. Then goes on to anoint Mishima as his potential favorite, due to the fact of its production difficulty. “I still can’t believe I ever made that film” His most personal favorite is First Reformed. His best stylistically, he says, is Cat People. “I mean, it’s a vision. So, I’ve been lucky and I made with some zeroes as we all do. But more and more, the films seem to have a shelf life, and that’s a very tricky thing in art.”

And as for his lifetime achievement award. Schrader put it casually and to the point.

“I am deeply honored. Venice is the Lion of my heart.”