Laurent Cantet, winner of the Palme d’Or in 2008, died at the age of 63

The French director Laurent Cantet, who achieved the Cannes Palme d’Or in 2008 for ‘Entre les murs’ (‘The class’), he died this Thursday at the age of 63, the Libertation newspaper reported.

Cantet died of cancer that he had been suffering from for some time, and whose treatment did not prevent him from working on a film that 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 French-language film to win the Palme d’Or at 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, it received ten other national and international awards 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.

With information from EFE