The French director Laurent Cantet who won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2008 for Entre les murs (The class), passed away this Thursday at 63 yearsreported the Libertation newspaper.
Cantet died of cancer who had been suffering for some time, and whose treatment did not prevent him from being working on a movie which was in pre-production, in collaboration with Marie-Ange Lucciani, producer of the acclaimed Anatomy of a Fall.
He directed 13 titles, including feature films (ten), shorts (two) and a television miniseries, and he wrote them all, either alone or working in a group.
International recognition came with Entre les murs, which was the first film in French in win the Palme d’Or of Cannes in 21 years.
The film had an impact for its narration of life in a high school in a troubled neighborhood of Paris, where a teacher fights to get his message across to teenage students of different races and from modest origins.
In addition to the Palme d’Or at Cannes, he received ten other awards national and international and was nominated for the 2009 Oscars.
Cantat created a cinema of social conscience and dealt with the lack of morality of contemporary society, as shown above all by Resources humaines (1999), which narrates the adventures of a young man from a working-class family who, after brilliant studies, begins to work in the offices of a factory, where he must undertake the dismissal of some workers, including his own father.
