Viggo Mortensen’s career to be honoured by Spanish festival

MADRID — The career of Viggo Mortensen, Aragorn in the popular trilogy “Lord of the Rings” and a protagonist in the Academy Award-winning “Green Book,” will be honoured at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival.

The festival announced Monday that this year’s recipient of its “Donostia Award” will be Mortensen. For the moment, organizers are planning to hold the festival as normal, with film stars flying in from around the world. Spain has lifted most of its restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has left more than 28,000 dead in the country.

The Danish-American actor will also present the European premiere of “Falling,” his directorial debut, at the prestigious festival in northern Spain between Sept. 18-26.

The movie closed the Sundance Festival and has been selected for the Cannes Festival. It stars Lance Henriksen in the role of an aging father whose world collides with that of his estranged, homosexual son, played by Mortensen himself.

Mortensen, 61, has featured in around 50 movies in a career spanning more than three decades. He has been nominated for Oscars three times — for “Eastern Promises,” “Captain Fantastic,” and “Green Book,” in which he portrays the prejudiced driver of classical pianist Don Shirley, played by Mahershala Ali, during a tour of the Deep South in the early 1960s.

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This story has corrected the first name to Mahershala, not Maershala, in the last paragraph.

The Associated Press