Maui Film Festival to Award Kirsten Dunst, Jessica Chastain

By Vanessa Wolf

Jessica Chastain at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

The Maui Film Festival will be held June 12-16 at the Wailea Resort.

Barry Rivers, the director of the event, announced this week that Golden Globe Award winner Jessica Chastain will be the 2013 Maui Film Festival Nova Award recipient.

The Maui Film Festival Nova Award honors a film artist “for their astonishingly original and seamless performances, and the way they consistently infuse the characters they embody with insight, humanity and wisdom.”

In 2011, Chastain starred as Celia Foote in “The Help,” which earned her Academy Award, Golden Globe, SAG Award and BFCA Critics’ Choice Award nominations.

In 2012, Chastain starred in “Zero Dark 30,” a performance which earned her the BFCA Critic’s Choice Award for Best Actress, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama, and her second consecutive Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

“Few film artists are as talented and versatile as Jessica Chastain. She has made this clear in the range of characters she has brought to life in her chameleon-like silver screen performances,” Said Rivers. “Jessica is one-of-a-kind and we couldn’t be more pleased to honor her with the 2013 Maui Film Festival Nova Award.

In addition, Kirsten Dunst will receive the 2013 Maui Film Festival’s Pathfinder Award, which “honors an actor or actress whose eclectic choices and charismatic performances encourage us all to expand our definition of what it means to be human.”

So what did it for you? “Marie Antoinette,” “Bring It On,” or the “Spiderman” trilogy? So hard to choose…

Dunst got her showbiz start at the age of three, when she began filming television commercials and is well-remembered for her role as the child vampire in “Interview with the Vampire,” for which she received a Golden Globe nomination.

If that’s not enough, Brie Larson will receive the 2013 Maui Film Festival’s Rising Star Award, which honors a young film artist for “daring to dream big dreams and then delivering brilliant performances when opportunity knocks.”

Larson is 23, but has already built an impressive career and is considered one of the more versatile young actresses working today.

Larson starred in Maui native Destin Cretton’s SXSW Grand Jury Prize winning film, “Short Term 12.”

In 2012, she was seen in the “21 Jump Street” film, but is best known for her portrayal of Kate, Tara’s long-suffering teenage daughter in Showtime’s “United States of Tara.”

“The Maui Film Festival is ecstatic to announce Kirsten Dunst and Brie Larsen as two of 2013’s honorees. They are both not only beautiful women inside and out but are also talented nearly beyond description and uniquely passionate in their portrayals of the characters they bring to life,” said Rivers. “I have no doubt each of their Celestial Cinema Big Screen Tributes will be spectacular.”

All awards will be presented at the Celestial Cinema located at the Wailea Gold & Emerald Golf Course.

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