What can’t Julianne Moore do?

The U.S. actress accepted Zurich Film Festival‘s lifetime achievement honor, the Golden Icon Award, in perfect German on Friday night.

She was joined at the ceremony by Jesse Eisenberg, who directs her in his latest feature The Debut, a musical-comedy co-starring Paul Giamatti, which is screening at the 22nd edition in Switzerland this week.

Moore called upon her own childhood growing up in Europe while making her acceptance speech. “Thank you for this wonderful honor,” said a translated version of her words. “I know that I am in Switzerland right now, but as a teenager, I lived in Germany. And my teacher there told me that I could become an actress. Had I not moved to Europe with my parents, I would not have had this wonderful life. And I wouldn’t be here with you tonight to speak my bad German to you.”

On the carpet ahead of the presentation, the Oscar-winning actress beamed and said she was feeling “pretty good” about the prospect of receiving the prestigious Golden Icon. “And it’s really wonderful to be here with Jesse Eisenberg, who’s such a tremendous talent and has been an unbelievably wonderful creative partner,” she added. “He’s such a genius, so I’m just happy to be sharing this experience with him, and to be here with our movie. Every day was phenomenal. It really was. There’s actually a shot of me that Jesse said was so, so funny because I was making so many dumb faces. But I said, ‘That was just my dumb face!’ I was enjoying it so much.”

Eisenberg’s third directorial feature follows Mona Friedman (Moore), who is cast in a bit part at a small community theater and transforms from a shy, unassuming housewife into a zealous method actor willing to do anything to protect the artistic integrity of her marginal role — even if it means waging war against the show’s domineering director (Giamatti).

The filmmaker-actor-writer told reporters on the Zurich carpet on Friday: “Mona is me. When I was seven years old in New Jersey in 1990, I was a sad little kid, and then I joined a community theater and I found a home.” On the brilliance of Moore, who starred in Eisenberg’s directorial debut When You Finish Saving the World (2022), he said: “When I started writing it, it was only her, and if she did not want to do it, the movie would have not been made. There’s no one else on the planet, alive or dead or yet to be born, who could play [the role] as good as she [does].”

Among Moore’s best-known performances are Still Alice, for which she won the Academy Award, as well as The Hours and The Kids Are All Right. Recent credits include Apple TV’s Echo Valley, Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door and Netflix limited series Sirens. Next year, she will return to the stage to star in the title role of the Off-Broadway play Faydra.

Also on Friday night in Zurich, In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin filmmaker Martin McDonagh was given the fest’s A Tribute To… Award. The honor was in celebration of his most recent film, Wild Horse Nine, which is currently making its way around the festival circuit and already generating Oscar buzz, particularly for lead actor John Malkovich.

Set shortly before the 1973 military coup in Chile, Wild Horse Nine stars Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as Chris and Lee, longtime CIA partners stationed in Santiago who are dispatched to Easter Island by their bureau chief, MJ (Buscemi) to assist in the U.S.’s covert campaign to undermine the democratically elected Chilean government. Against the surreal backdrop of the island’s monumental Moai statues, the pair begin reckoning with their murky shared past.

“I love coming to Zurich, and it’s a tremendous honor,” said the British-Irish creative on the carpet ahead of his ceremony. “I’m excited. I know it’s a great, very cine-literate audience, so I hope they’ll like [Wild Horse Nine] as much as the other ones.”

He said about travelling to Easter Island: “I visited maybe 15 years ago, and was just struck by the beauty of the place, [and] also the mystery of the Moai heads, and I thought it could be almost a character in a film, and it’s turned out to be that way. I’d worked with Sam Rockwell obviously a bunch of times before, so that’s always a joy. But John Malkovich was new to me, and he’s just perfect for the part. He’s funny and he’s dangerous. And Steve Buscemi and Parker Posey were fantastic too.”

These aren’t the only awards Zurich is dishing out. Tom Hiddleston received the Golden Eye on Thursday night as the fest opened with his Everest drama, Tenzing, and John Turturro will also be given the same honor for his starring role in this year’s The Only Living Pickpocket in New York.

The 22nd Zurich Film Festival runs Sept. 24-Oct. 4.

Former To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen was interviewed on his podcast Friday to give his unfiltered reaction to A24‘s unauthorized, dramatized film about parts of his life, Primetime, which he called overly dramatic, detached from reality, and a “fever dream” — while giving Robert Pattinson‘s performance a “D” grade.

Primetime, which opens Friday in the U.S., is set in 2006 and follows Pattinson’s fictionalized version of Hansen as the popular To Catch a Predator segment on NBC’s Dateline grows into its own primetime block on the network. On the show, Hansen blurred journalistic lines by working with law enforcement and the watchdog group Perverted Justice to intercept adult men as they arrived, unbeknownst to them, at a sting house to meet a minor they’d met online for sex. The men were typically arrested as a result. The series drew mixed reactions, with concerns about potential entrapment-law violations at the forefront of the criticism.

In a brief segment produced for his video podcast, Have a Seat with Chris Hansen, the former NBC News journalist is seen exiting a Times Square AMC after viewing the film for the first time at a Thursday night screening — his first look at the indie drama since its theatrical release. He’s then asked for his first reaction to the Lance Oppenheim-directed film.

“It’s hard for me to — obviously, I’m not a judge, because the character is based on me,” he said. “I think because the character is so detached from reality, from anything I’ve ever experienced then or now doing the investigations — I’m not sure what the point of it was.”

The rest of the podcast episode has Hansen discussing the film, its director and Pattinson’s portrayal of him with Fox News’ Jesse Watters. Hansen railed against the movie throughout.

Oppenheim has said he conceived Primetime after receiving a personalized Cameo video from the To Catch a Predator host. Hansen said on his podcast that he spoke to a mutual friend before seeing the film, and that Oppenheim told the friend it was “something to the effect of, ‘a love letter to Chris Hansen, and it gets a little weird in the storytelling.’”

Hansen also flagged inaccuracies in the fictionalized version of his life — including scenes involving Jeff Zucker and Stone Phillips that he insists never happened — and said absolutely nothing in the film was close to reality. He assured viewers he’s not the ratings-obsessed figure the script conjures. His biggest gripe, he said, is that the film portrays him as an aloof parent, which he says is far from how he relates to his kids. As for Pattinson’s take on Hansen circa 2006, Hansen had few kind words.

“He’s got work to do. I’m kind of the only guy that counts for this, right?” he said.

Days before seeing the movie, Hansen spoke with The Hollywood Reporter‘s Seth Abramovich about what he knew of the film. A24 hadn’t reached out to him or the production to explain the premise or ask for his input, he said.

“Based upon what I’ve seen in the trailer and my understanding of what’s been written about the film, they wanted to create something much darker and way more dramatic,” he said. “I think it’s an insult to the thousands of men and women who work hard every day to protect children from predators. They’ve turned something that is very positive, very challenging and not without risk into what is essentially a horror film.”

On Friday, after viewing Primetime, he doubled down with a direct swipe at Oppenheim.

“You have to question the motives of not coming forward and talking to me or anybody I’ve worked closely with over the years,” he said. “They didn’t want to hear that Chris Hansen is a good guy. They didn’t want to hear that this work is important. This director had a dark image of what he wanted to do. He wanted to create a horror-like film with interesting photography, and didn’t want to hear anything else.”

Hansen continues identifying and capturing potential child predators on Takedown with Chris Hansen. Earlier on Friday, Hansen’s TruBlu streaming network dropped the trailer for I’m Chris Hansen, a documentary centered around the host.