Leonardo DiCaprio is to be honoured at the 28th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival, it had been announced.

The Inception star will receive the American Riviera Award on February 1, 2013 which recognises "an artist who had a strong influence on American cinema."

Roger Durling, the executive director of the festival said: "We are thrilled to be honouring Leonardo DiCaprio with the American Riviera Award, in a year where he has shown us another layer of his immeasurable talent. His performance in Django Unchained reaffirms that he is the most relevant actor of this generation."

The festival will open on January 24 at the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara, with the premiere of Disconnect, a new drama directed by Henry-Alex Rubin and starring Jason Bateman, Andrea Riseborough and Alexander Skarsgard.

The ensemble cast drama follows a group of tech-obsessed characters, and is the first fiction film from Oscar-nominated docmentary maker Rubin.

Source: Press Release