French director Laurent Cantet has died. He won the Palme d’Or for the drama Mezi zdmi

“He died this morning in Paris, he was ill,” Cantet’s agent Isabelle de la Patellière told AFP.

He is probably best known for his 2008 film Between the Walls, based on the autobiographical novel by François Bégaudeau. It stars real teachers and students as well as the author of the literary work.

The film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Awards for Best International Film and received several nominations at other events. Cantet personally presented it at the French Film Festival in Prague. “More and more directors these days, like me, have the desire to write their films based on reality. I am convinced that reality provides us with as many scenarios as we can wish for, and I am interested in bearing witness to the state of the world we live in, ” he said then in an interview for Aktuálně.cz.

Laurent Cantet has always focused on deeply human characters who keep searching for their place in society, writes Libération about the director.

“He made a trio of excellent films, which are characterized by a high degree of thoughtfulness, progressiveness and education,” adds the British newspaper The Guardian. He describes the director as intelligent and his films as brilliantly acted. The success of his lesser-known film suggests, according to the English paper, that “all teachers are actors who play a part in front of the most demanding audience imaginable”.

The organizers of the Cannes festival on Canteta in a post on the social network X https://twitter.com/Festival_Cannes/status/1783524036414238820 as a “committed artist and convinced humanist” who believed that cinema could change society.

The director has recently been working on a project called L’Apprenti (The Apprentice), which he wanted to release next year.