Jean-Luc Godard, King of France’s New Wave, Dies at 91

Franco-Swiss director and New Wave linchpin Jean-Luc Godard, who revolutionized world cinema with his ground-breaking debut, “Breathless,” and never stopped pushing the envelope of his creativity, has died. He was 91.

The news was confirmed by Godard’s family in a statement which read, “There will not be any official ceremony. Jean-Luc Godard died peacefully in his home surrounded with his close ones. He will be cremated.”

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Godard died by assisted suicide at his home in Rolle, Switzerland, the New York Times reported. His legal adviser Patrick Jeanneret said the auteur had been suffering from “multiple disabling pathologies.”

Jeanneret said that Godard wanted to die with dignity “and that was exactly what he did.”

French president Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Godard on social media with a message describing Godard as “the most iconoclastic of New Wave filmmakers, had invented a resolutely modern, intensely free art. We are losing a national treasure, a look of genius.”