Organizers of the upcoming Rome Film Festival will bestow a special award to Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

The 54-year-old prolific director is the first Japanese to receive the Maverick Director Award, which is given to filmmakers who have created new and avant-garde styles of cinema.

Festival organizers said Miike is considered to be "one of the most original and prolific auteurs in contemporary cinema."

"Miike has left his mark on the history of genre cinema with his unmistakably brutal, always visually brilliant, cultured and above all, uncensored approach, devoid of all moralism," organizers said, according to Japan Times.

Apart from receiving the special award, Miike will also screen his new film, "As the Gods Will (Kamisama no Iu Toori)," at the festival. The movie, which stars actor Sota Fukushi, will compete in the Gala section for "popular but original" films at the festival.

"As the Gods Will" marks Miike's return to his gory roots. Described as the bloodier Japanese cousin of the popular dystopian franchise, "Hunger Games," Miike's latest film is based on a Muneyuki Kanshiro manga that follows the story of teenagers who are forced to participate in a series of games where losers must face death.

Last year, the prolific director presented the police thriller "Shield of Straw" in Cannes. Throughout his 20-year career, genre-hopping Miike has helmed almost 100 films that spans the range of horror (One Missed Call) to yakuza thrillers (Ichi the Killer, Dead or Alive) to samurai movies (Thirteen Assassins, Zatoichi) and even family films (Ninja Kids).

In an interview, popular filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, who had a cameo in "Sukiyaki Western Django," even referred to Miike as "the godfather" of "ultraviolent, get-under-your-skin movies."

It will be Miike's third foray to the Rome Festival Festival following the 2012 world premiere of "The Lessons of the Evil" and the 2013 premiere of "The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji" and "Blue Planet Brothers."

"Every one of his films is a breakneck race through an uncannily poetic and surprisingly political imagination," said festival artistic director Marco Muller.

The Rome Film Festival will be held from Oct. 16 to 25.