For some 20 years now, the "Pardo d'onore" (Leopard of Honour, since 2009 Pardo d'onore Swisscom) has provided an opportunity to commend illustrious film directors, who embody the very idea of cinema which the festival has supported so passionately since its inception: the best of auteur films, creative and audacious, with a strong vision and a personal style, endlessly reinventing itself. Locarno is proud to number amongst recipients of the "Pardo d‘onore" such master filmmakers as Jacques Rivette, Manoel de Oliveira, Samuel Fuller, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jean-Luc Godard, Daniel Schmid, Ken Loach, Ermanno Olmi, Terry Gilliam, Abbas Kiarostami, Wim Wenders, Aleksandr Sokurov, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Amos Gitai, William Friedkin, Alain Tanner, Jia Zhangke, Werner Herzog, Agnès Varda, Michael Cimino and Marco Bellocchio, winners of the Vela d'argento in 1965, and Alejandro Jodorowsky in 2016.