According to the Swiss National Film Archive, rebellious French director Jean-Marie Straub passed away peacefully on Sunday at his home in Switzerland. He was 89.
Straub got the lifetime achievement award from the Locarno Film Festival and was considered a peer of several greats from the French New Wave art film movement.
Straub began his career as an assistant to some of the greatest French filmmakers of the time, including Jean Renoir, Jacques Rivette and Robert Bresson. Straub was born in Metz in northeastern France in 1933.
He was good friends with Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, the leaders of the New Wave. He moved from France to Germany in the 1960s, where he co-directed movies with his then-wife Daniele Huillet.
The couple challenged traditional narrative and aesthetic patterns. She died in 2006.
Among their best-known films are ‘From the Clouds to the Resistance’ (1979) and ‘Sicilia!’ (1999).
He eventually lived around the corner from Godard, who died in Rolle in September aged 91.
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