Jean-Luc Godard, the French-Swiss filmmaker who revolutionized cinema in the late 1950s and 1960s as the leading figure of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) movement, died Tuesday at the age of 91.
The Paris-born Godard produced now-cult movies such as À bout de souffle (“Breathless” 1960), Le Mépris (“Contempt” 1963) and Alphaville (1965), with his later works always garnering interest among cinephiles, even if often considered inaccessible for the wider public.
Godard’s lawyer reported that that the filmmaker had been “stricken with multiple incapacitating illnesses,” and decided to end his life through assisted suicide, which is legal in Switzerland, where he’d lived for decades.
Tributes to Godard’s art and life have been coming in from all over the world. “We’ve lost a national treasure, the eye of a genius,” said French President Emmanuel Macron. Brigitte Bardot, who played in Contempt, paid her respects on Twitter and Alain Delon expressed his gratitude: “Thank you, Jean-Luc, for the beautiful memories you left us.”
Here is a selection of front pages from around the world paying tribute to the iconoclast filmmaker:
France – Libération
France – L’Humanité
France – Le Monde
France – Le Figaro
Switzerland – Le Temps
Switzerland – Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Switzerland – Tages Anzeiger
Switzerland – 20 minutes
Belgium – Le Soir
Germany – die Tageszeitung
Germany – Süddeutsche Zeitung
Germany – Frankfurter Allgemeine
Italy – Corriere Della Sera
Italy – La Repubblica
UK – The Guardian
Spain – El Pais
Portugal – Publico
U.S
Brazil – Folha de S. Paulo
Argentina – Rio Negro
