Director Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Legendary Franco-Swiss director, screenwriter and actor Jean-Luc Godard has died at the age of 91.

According to Libération, Godard’s relatives announced his death on Tuesday, September 13. The cause of death of the director is not reported.

Jean-Luc Godard was born on December 3, 1930 in Paris, France. He stood at the origins of the French New Wave in cinema. Representatives of the new wave abandoned the traditional style of shooting and surprised the audience with unpredictable and even experimental pictures.

Godard’s debut feature film Breathless in 1960 became one of the most striking projects of the French new wave. Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut wrote the script for the film before the start of each shooting day, and the actors improvised a lot during the filming. The style of filming made the action of the characters in the film seem natural to the audience, as if it were a documentary. The main roles in the film “Breathless” were played by Jean-Paul Belmondo and Gene Seberg.

Jean-Luc Godard also directed such cult films as Contempt (1963) with Brigitte Bardot, The Little Soldier (1960), Live Your Life (1962), Outsider Band (1964), Alphaville ( 1965), Crazy Pierrot (1965) with Belmondo, Male-Female (1966), Chinese Woman (1967) and Weekend (1967). Several of Godard’s films starred his ex-wives Anna Karina and Anna Wiazemsky.

In 2011, Jean-Luc Godard received an Oscar for his contribution to the development of cinema. Godard’s last film was the drama The Book of Images, which was released in 2018. The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.