Naomi Watts will accept the Golden Eye Award at this year’s Zurich Film Festival, the organization announced Thursday, honoring her performance in “The Housewife.” The two-time Oscar nominee will receive the prize in person on September 26 and follow it with a career-spanning conversation during a festival masterclass session.
In the film, directed by Ben Shirinian, Watts plays the elegant, guarded wife of a man suspected of hiding a Nazi past in 1960s New York. The story turns when a young New York Times reporter, played by Tye Sheridan, digs into the husband’s history and grows close to Watts’ character in the process. Luke Evans plays the husband. The drama draws on true events and will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival before heading to Switzerland.
Festival CEO Christian Jungen linked the award to Watts’ breakout in David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive,” saying her strongest work sits in the space between glamour and darkness, between what a character shows and what she hides. He said “The Housewife” places her in exactly that territory, calling her performance one of the finest of her career and noting the film’s broader point about the value of investigative journalism in exposing buried history.
Watts responded to the honor in a statement, saying she looks forward to accepting it in Zurich and thanking the festival for recognizing her role.
The actress has twice come close to Oscar gold without winning, earning nominations for “21 Grams” in 2004 and “The Impossible” in 2013. She picked up an Emmy nomination more recently for playing Babe Paley in the second season of “Feud.” The Golden Eye now places her alongside a run of recent honorees that includes Kristen Stewart, Jude Law, Benedict Cumberbatch and Alicia Vikander.
The 2026 Zurich Film Festival runs from September 24 through October 4, mixing red-carpet tributes like Watts’ with its long-running competition for emerging directors.
