Respected Actor to receive Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema at opening night tribute gala

Preeminent Actor, director and producer Robert De Niro, two-time Academy Award® winner, four-time Academy Award® nominee and Golden Globe winner, will receive the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Contribution to World Cinema at the 43rd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the famous spa town of Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic on July 4, announced Jiří Bartoška, festival president.

What Just Happened, starring De Niro, a Tribeca/Linson Films production from 2929 Productions, will be the opening night film at Karlovy Vary. The film premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and was the closing night picture at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Directed by Academy Award® winning Barry Levinson, the film is based on the acclaimed, bestselling memoir by veteran Hollywood producer Art Linson, who wrote the screenplay and produced the film with De Niro and Jane Rosenthal. The executive producers are Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban.

De Niro launched his prolific motion picture career in Brian De Palma's The Wedding Party in 1969. At the beginning of the 1970s, his film career took an auspicious turn in with Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) for which he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award and notably Mean Streets (1973) the first of his enduring collaboration with director Martin Scorsese. Shortly afterwards De Niro became an international star in Francis Ford Coppola's second installment of The Godfather (1974); De Niro's incomparable performance in the film garnered him his first Oscar®. The actor's work with Scorsese, which includes New York, New York (1977), the nostalgic tribute to classic musicals to be presented at this year's Karlovy Vary, currently numbers eight films, two Oscar® nominations - for Taxi Driver (1976) and Cape Fear (1991) - as well as a second Academy Award® and a Golden Globe for his role as boxing champion Jake LaMotta in the biographical drama Raging Bull (1980). In addition, he has earned two other Oscar® nominations, one for his work in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978) and another for his performance as the catatonic patient Leonard Lowe in Penny Marshall's Awakenings (1990).

De Niro's distinguished body of work also includes performances in Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 aka Novecento (1976); Ulu Grosbard's True Confessions (1981) Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984); Roland Joffe's The Mission (1986); Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987); Martin Brest's Midnight Run (1988); Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown (1997) and John Frankenheimer's Ronin (1998). De Niro has continued to enhance his reputation with a variety of comedy roles. He and costar Dustin Hoffman appeared in the satirical Wag the Dog (1997), and standout comic opportunities came while teaming up with comedian Billy Crystal in Harold Ramis' Analyze This (1999) and Analyze That (2002), and as Ben Stiller's disagreeable father-in-law in Jay Roach's Meet the Parents (2000) and Meet the Fockers (2004).

De Niro takes pride in the development of his production company, Tribeca Productions, the Tribeca Film Center, which he founded with Jane Rosenthal in 1988, and the Tribeca Film Festival, which he founded with Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff in 2001 as a response to the attacks on the World Trade Center. Now in its seventh year, the Tribeca Film Festival, which was conceived to foster the economic and cultural revitalization of Lower Manhattan through an annual celebration of film, music, and culture continues to accomplish its mission to promote New York City as a major filmmaking center and help filmmakers reach the broadest possible audiences.

Through Tribeca Productions, De Niro develops projects on which he serves in a combination of capacities, including producer, director and actor. The company has produced over 24 films including De Niro's directorial debut A Bronx Tale (1993) and his critically-acclaimed drama The Good Shepherd (2006), starring Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, described as "one of the most impressive movies ever made about espionage" by the New Yorker's David Denby. Other Tribeca features include Cape Fear, Night and the City, Marvin's Room, Wag the Dog, Analyze This, Meet the Parents, Analyze That and Meet the Fockers.

De Niro's upcoming projects include the crime drama Righteous Kill, in which he co-stars with Al Pacino and Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson, and Kirk Jones' Everybody's Fine, co-starring with Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell.