Scottish star Ewan McGregor will receive this year’s Honorary Dragon Award, a lifetime achievement honor, at Sweden’s Göteborg Film Festival.
McGregor will attend the Göteborg event, which runs from Jan. 26 to Feb. 4, and will present the Nordic premiere screening of his latest feature, Mother, Couch. McGregor stars alongside Rhys Ifans and Lara Flynn Boyle as three siblings bought together when their eccentric mother, played by Ellen Burstyn, sits herself down on a couch in a vintage furniture store and refuses to get up. Directed by Swedish filmmaker Niclas Larsson, Mother, Couch is adapted from Swedish author Jerker Virdborg’s novel Mamma i soffa. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year.
McGregor will receive his Dragon Award following a screening of his 1996 breakthrough Trainspotting, after which he will participate in an onstage conversation.
“Ewan McGregor is an androgynous symbol of the Cool Britannia era, a romantic icon for the millennial generation, and a saber-swinging franchise holder in the pop-cultural center of the galaxy,” said Göteborg’s artistic director, Jonas Holmberg. “But above all, he is an incredibly skilled artist. By mastering stylized extravagance, literary precision and nuanced realism with the same relaxed self-evidence, Ewan McGregor has shown that he is one of the truly great actors of our time.”
Göteborg will also screen a retrospective of McGregor’s work, which has ranged from the independent features of his early career — Shallow Grave, Brassed Off, Velvet Goldmine — to Baz Luhrmann’s splashy musical Moulin Rouge!, Ridley Scott’s military drama Black Hawk Down and his interpretation of Obi-Wan Kenobi in multiple Star Wars films and the recent Disney+ series. Other notable TV roles include the dual role as twin brothers Emmit and Ray Stussy in season three of FX’s Fargo and the upcoming Paramount+/Showtime historical thriller A Gentleman in Moscow, which he will star in and also executive produce.
