French filmmaker Laurent Cantet, awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for the film “Between the Walls”, passed away this Thursday, his agent informed AFP.
“He died this morning in Paris due to illness,” declared Isabelle de la Patellière, confirming a report from the daily Libération.
The 63-year-old director, author of nine feature films, was working on a film project entitled “The Apprentice”, scheduled for release in 2025.
A discreet director with a strong social conscience, Laurent Cantet made Cannes (southeast France) history in 2008, when he won the Palme d’Or for “Between the Walls”, awarded by a jury chaired by Sean Penn.
Half documentary, half fiction, this film, with a budget of 2.4 million euros, features a French teacher, François Bégaudeau (author of the novel of the same name on which it is based), and students between 13 and 15 years old, from very diverse geographical and social situations, in a Parisian secondary school.
The Cannes Film Festival reacted immediately on Thursday, saluting the memory of a “tireless humanist, who sought the light despite social violence, who found hope despite the harshness of reality”.
He returned to Cannes in 2017 with “L’Atelier”, where a group of young people on an insertion basis participate in a writing course. The film reveals a world that is perhaps even harsher than that described in “Between the Walls”.
“At the same time, I hope the film also shows the importance of the spoken word. Something that young people master very well”, said Laurent Cantet at the time.
His latest film, “Arthur Rambo”, released in 2021, addresses the destruction of a reputation on social media. It was based on the true story of Mehdi Meklat, a young author who became famous writing about disadvantaged neighborhoods, before seeing his career end when anti-Semitic, homophobic, racist and sexist tweets published in 2017 were discovered.
“Laurent Cantet, a fine, discreet and full of humanity filmmaker, who was in no way dazzled by his Palme d’Or, achieved with precision and a sense of rhythm what is the most difficult thing in cinema: filming conversations, that is, life,” Gilles Jacob, former president of the Cannes Film Festival, told AFP.
