Film director Jean-Luc Godard, who spearheaded the revolutionary French New Wave of cinema, has died at 91 by assisted suicide at his home in Switzerland.
Godard burst onto the scene with 1960’s À bout de souffle (Breathless), which started a run of acclaimed releases that rewrote the rules of film and influenced directors from Martin Scorsese to Quentin Tarantino.
“Jean-Luc Godard, the most iconoclastic of New Wave filmmakers, invented a resolutely modern, intensely free art. We have lost a national treasure, a man who had the vision of a genius.”
Godard’s legal advisor Patrick Jeanneret told the AFP news agency that the Franco-Swiss film-maker “had recourse to legal assistance in Switzerland for a voluntary departure as he was stricken with ‘multiple invalidating illnesses’, according to the medical report”.
Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland in some circumstances.
