WATERVILLE – The sixth annual Maine International Film Festival kicks off on Friday with the presentation of an award to Peter Fonda.

Fonda, an Oscar-nominated actor-director, is scheduled to attend the 10-day festival and will be presented with the Mid-Life Achievement Award.

“He’s such a worthy recipient, and he happens to be one that means a lot to a lot of people as well,” festival co-programmer Ken Eisen said. A showing of a recently restored print of Fonda’s 1971 Western, “The Hired Hand,” will be shown Sunday after the awards ceremony.

Fonda stars in the film, the first movie he directed. The film also stars Verna Bloom, who summers on Mount Desert Island with her husband, Jay Cocks, the former Time magazine film critic and Oscar-nominated screenwriter who wrote “Gangs of New York” and “The Age of Innocence.”

Both of Cocks’ films are part of the festival’s movie lineup, as are Fonda’s films, “Easy Rider,” “Ulee’s Gold,” “Lilith” and “The Limey.”

The festival will feature more than 100 films from 23 countries and be held at the Railroad Square Cinema and the Waterville Opera House.

The festival will include question-and-answer sessions with filmmakers, a concert with jazz trombonist and Grammy Award-nominee Roswell Rudd, and the Maine Student Film & Video Awards screening.

The festival opens Friday at 7 p.m. and ends July 21. Tickets for opening and closing night films are $10 and available at both Railroad Square and the Opera House. Tickets for individual films are $8 each and are available before each showing. Full festival passes are $125. Partial passes are $75 and good for 10 films.