The Montreal World Film Festival is to pay tribute to veteran Canadian film distributor Victor Loewy on its opening weekend.

Loewy, chairman and CEO of Alliance Films, will be on hand at an Aug. 20 festival screening in Montreal of The Artist, at the Imperial Cinema.

The Alliance Films topper told Playback Daily that he prefers to avoid the spotlight, but agreed to accept the tribute out of respect for his 30-year friendship and professional relationship with MWFF founder Serge Losique.

“I felt it was a nice gesture from him to do a tribute for me and it would be a nice gesture for me to accept it from him,” he said.

Loewy in the early 1970s founded Vivafilm in Montreal with long-time business partner Robert Lantos before eventually running Alliance Films, Canada’s biggest indie distributor.

“Victor Loewy is not only a great businessman, he is a deeply cultured man with great feeling for the ‘seventh art;’ a man who has promoted our own cinema assiduously even as he introduced us to masterpieces from abroad,” Losique said of Loewy in a statement.

The Montreal World Film Festival is set to run from Aug. 18 to 28.