Lawrence Bender
Lawrence Bender was just 35 when he produced the Sundance hit Reservoir Dogs, directed by Quentin Tarantino—a film that played a key role in the breakout of 1990s independent cinema. Two years later, he teamed up with Tarantino once again to produce Pulp Fiction, the Palme d'Or–winning film that would forever change the landscape of cinema. Just a few months later, Pulp Fiction earned Bender an Oscar nomination, making him one of the youngest producers ever nominated for the Best Picture award.
Born in New York to parents who were both educators, Bender’s additional collaborations with Tarantino include Four Rooms, Jackie Brown, From Dusk Till Dawn, both volumes of Kill Bill, and Inglourious Basterds, which was also nominated for Best Picture. He received another Oscar nomination in 1997 for producing Gus Van Sant's Good Will Hunting. His other credits include Fresh, A Price Above Rubies starring Renée Zellweger, Anna and the King, and The Mexican starring Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts.
In 2006, Bender produced An Inconvenient Truth, directed by Davis Guggenheim, which documented Al Gore's campaign to raise awareness about global warming. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. He went on to produce other documentaries tackling urgent global issues, such as Countdown to Zero by Lucy Walker and a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth.
In 2005, Bender received the Torch of Liberty Award; in 2008, he was honored with a special distinction by the Physicists for Social Responsibility organization. In 2001, Bender was awarded Producer of the Year at the Cannes Film Festival—the first American to receive that honor, and in 2021, he won the prestigious Peabody Award for the animated short Cops and Robbers.
His production credits also include Martin Scorsese's Silence, the Oscar-winning war film Hacksaw Ridge, the 2020 Academy Award–winning short Two Distant Strangers, and the 2021 streaming hit The Harder They Fall.
Beyond his work as a producer, bringing some of the most compelling and talked-about voices to the forefront of cinema, Bender is also actively involved in several humanitarian organizations. Bender is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pacific Council, and the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, where he served as a co-chair for six years, combining his work as a top-tier filmmaker with ongoing social engagement.
We are honored and delighted to present Lawrence Bender with an Achievement Award in recognition of his outstanding work and contributions to the world of cinema.
A masterclass with producer Lawrence Bender will be held on Saturday, July 19 2025 at 12:30, Mediatheque.