Award-winning French director Laurent Cantet has died at the age of 63 after an illness.
His creations dealt with some of the most complex issues of contemporary French society, including meritocracy, the education system, diversity and class struggle.
Cantet was best known outside France for his film Entre les Murs (In the Classroom), which won the Palme d'Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. It depicts life in a high school classroom in the diverse 20th arrondissement of Paris and the relationship between students, played by non-professional teenage actors, and their sometimes exasperated teacher.
Based on an autobiographical novel about an idealistic young teacher who confronts a troubled class of underprivileged kids, Cantet chose the book's author for the lead role. It became one of the few Palme d'Or-winning films to sell more than 1 million tickets at the French box office in the past two decades.
"Serious, subtle, sharp, disturbing, funny and moving," Le Monde wrote of the film, which won its Cannes prize in a unanimous decision by a jury led by American actor Sean Penn. "Inside the Classroom" explored the subtle intellectual confrontations and conversations that take place behind the door of a closed classroom: failures and frustrations not only between teachers and students, but also between a strict education system and modern society's unequal view of young people.
The film was praised by then-President Nicolas Sarkozy, who said the production portrayed the difficulty of the French education system as well as the courageous efforts of teachers.
But Cantet, who was described by Libération critic Didier Peron as a director of social films in the vein of Ken Loach, told Le Croix that he turned down an invitation to meet Sarkozy at the Elysee after the film's release. "I didn't want to go and be filmed with Sarkozy and I didn't want to talk about diversity with someone who invented the ministry of national identity," he said.
Kanté has been hailed by French critics for bringing a form of generosity and humanism to the issues he tackles. These range from brutal systems of management and status in the world of work, shown in his film Human Resources, to sex tourism in 1970s Haiti in the south
The Cannes Film Festival described him as "a fierce humanist who seeks light despite social violence and finds hope despite the harshness of reality."
His other films include Time Out, inspired by the true story of a man who killed his parents, wife and children after pretending to be a successful doctor for two decades. It won two awards at the 2001 Venice Film Festival.
Cantet returned to Cannes in 2017 with The Workshop, about a group of troubled young people attending a writing workshop near the southern city of Marseille.
His latest work, Arthur Rimbaud, which premiered in 2021, explores how a reputation can be destroyed on social media.
Cantet was working on a new film, The Apprentice, due out the following year. /BGNES
