Director Clint Eastwood (R) and his wife Dina Ruiz Eastwood arrive at the Museum of Tolerance International Film Festival gala awards presentation in his honor in Los Angeles November 14, 2010. [Xinhua/Reuters photo]?

Veteran Hollywood filmmaker Clint Eastwood and the 2009 thriller "Iron Cross" were honored at the inaugural International Film Festival held by the Museum of Tolerance ((MOTIFF) in Los Angeles, organizers said on Tuesday.

The acclaimed filmmaker was honored with a Tolerance Award for his body of work "encouraging tolerance, justice and human rights" at an awards reception at the Museum on Sunday evening. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was present at the event.

"I love this guy," said Schwarzenegger. "Ever since I was in Austria as a kid, watching his movies ... he was an inspiration for me to come over here to America and to also become an actor and to become a leading man."

"We believe Mr. Eastwood is a superb choice for this award, which celebrates those whose work shines a light on themes of acceptance, inclusion, tolerance and forgiveness," Rabbi Marvin Hier, Founding Director of the MOTIFF and Founder and Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance (MOT) said earlier.

"That is certainly true of Mr. Eastwood's outstanding cinematic achievements, with only the most recent examples being' Letters from Iwo Jima,''Gran Torino'and'Invictus,'" he added.

British writer-director Joshua Newton and Kevin Farr were honored with the festival's special Remembrance Award for "Iron Cross," a Holocaust theme film starring the late Roy Scheider in his last performance and Alexander Newton as the young version of Scheider's character.

Called by Rabbi Hier as "the most important film since ' Schindler's List,'" the drama will be screened Nov. 18 as the Closing Night film at the festival. It will be released worldwide in spring 2011.

In late September, "Iron Cross" was well received at the Boston Film Festival where Joshua Newton received the festival's Visionary Filmmaker Award and his 18-year-old son Alexander Newton was voted Best Young Actor.

Scheider, a two-time Academy Award nominee who died in Feb. 2008, acted as a retired New York police officer and Holocaust survivor who travels to Nuremberg after his wife's death to reconcile with his son and draws his reluctant son into a plan to exact justice and vengeance against an aging SS Commander who murdered Joseph's entire family during World War II.

At the six-day event which run on Nov. 13-18, films focusing on human rights issues past and present will be screened.

The Museum of Tolerance, which is the educational arm of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was founded in 1993 and hosts about 300, 000 visitors annually.