French film director, Jean-Luc Godard dies aged 91 by assisted suicide

Iconic French Film director, Jean-Luc Godard has died by assisted suicide aged 91.

Jean-Luc Godard, the French-Swiss director whose movies broke traditional cinema forms and heralded the radical New Wave film movement of the 1960s, died on Tuesday,  September 13. 

Godard died “peacefully” at his home in Rolle, Switzerland, according to a statement from his family.

They added: “No official [funeral] ceremony will take place. He will be cremated.”

The filmmaker used assisted suicide, which in his case was medically and legally validated, Godard’s legal counsel Patrick Jeanneret told Bloomberg News.

Godard suffered from “multiple disabling pathologies,” Jeanneret said, and “he decided in all lucidity to go.” 

Godard’s movie À bout de souffle (Breathless), started a run of acclaimed film releases that influenced directors from Martin Scorsese to Quentin Tarantino.

French President Emmanuel Macron took to his Twitter handle on Tuesday to mourn the film icon. He said Godard “had the vision of a genius”.

 “He was like an apparition in French cinema. Then he became a master of it.” he said 

“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 had more than 100 films to his name in total, including Une Femme Mariée (1964), Pierrot le fou (1965), Masculin Féminin (1966) and Week-end (1967).