Award-winning singer-songwriter, actress and filmmaker Barbra Streisand will be awarded the honorary Palme d'Or at the 79th Cannes Film Festival later this year, the organisers said on Wednesday.

Over her six-decade career, Streisand has starred in celebrated films including Funny Girl (1969), The Way We Were (1973) and Yentl (1983), which she also directed and produced, and has won two Academy Awards and 10 Grammy Awards, among other honors.

"Barbra Streisand has reached the pinnacle of the entertainment industry like no one before her. But this staggering record pales in comparison to her influence on pop culture in the second half of the twentieth century," the organisers said in a statement.

Award-winning Korean director Park Chan-wook will preside over the jury of this year's film festival in May.

-Reporting by Makini Brice, Editing by Nick Zieminski/Reuters