Terry Gilliam is to be given a lifetime achievement award at an international festival of fantasy film.

The Monty Python member turned successful director will be honoured at Amsterdam's Fantastic Film Festival in late April.

He will follow in the footsteps of Scream director Wes Craven and Paul Verhoeven, who made Basic Instinct.

Gilliam, whose offerings include Brazil, Time Bandits and The Brothers Grimm, will also hold a public interview during the festival.

Organisers said he was picked because he "never allows his fantasy to be limited".

When it began 23 years ago, the event was called the Weekend of Terror, and seen as a "meeting ground for nerds with a taste for stomach-churning, violent horror". It is now a more respectful fantasy festival and will open with a showing of Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth.