Some sad news to report. Director Laurent Cantet, who won the Palme d’Or in 2008 for “The Class,” has died at the age of 63.
His agent Isabelle de la Patellière told news agency Agence France Presse that the filmmaker passed away on Thursday morning of an illness. Cantet was supposed to shoot his next film “Enzo”, with Elodie Bouchez and Pierfrancesco Favino in the cast, in August.
Cantet will most be remembered for three excellent films — 1999’s “Human Resources,” and 2001’s “Time Out,” his best film, both scathing indictments of France’s economic instability. And, of course, there’s 2008’s “The Class,” which won him the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and was set entirely inside a secondary school in a working-class district of Paris.