According to French media reports, the well-known film director Laurent Cantet died of illness on April 25 at the age of 63.

Lauren Gonte

Laurent Cantet won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 for his film Between the Walls. He is often compared with British director Ken Loach by French film critics because both of them have a clear leftist stance and their works are full of intellectual sentiments of compassion and concern for the common people.

Laurent Cantet was born in the small town of Maille in western France on April 11, 1961. Both his parents were teachers. After graduating from the French Higher Film School in 1986, he worked as an assistant director and followed the documentary director Marcel Ophuls on the crew of "History of War News" (1994).

Stills from Human Resources

In 1999, the 38-year-old Gonte finally had the opportunity to direct a feature film. Human Resources, a documentary film, won the French Cesar Award for Best First Film, the European Film Award for Best Newcomer, the Spanish San Sebastian Film Festival for Best New Director and many other honors, and also established Laurent Gonte's distinctive personal style for the next 20 years.

In 2001, his second film, The Age of Disorder, premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The film was adapted from a real social event and tells the absurd story of an unemployed executive who kept it a secret from his family and continued to pretend to go to work, travel, and be busy. The film was listed in the Guardian's list of the top ten films in the world from 2000 to 2009.

In 2005, "Southland Lost" was selected for the main competition unit of the Venice Film Festival. Starring Charlotte Rampling, the film tells the story of an aging white woman from a developed country who goes to Haiti, an economically backward but beautiful country, to buy sex and sleep with underage black men. The film is set in the 1970s. However, the various plots in the film are still enough to resonate with the audience at a time when the gap between the rich and the poor is widening.

Lauren Cante at the Cannes Film Festival

Three years later, Laurent Cantet finally won the Cannes Film Festival's favor. The competition for the Palme d'Or that year was originally quite fierce. Famous directors such as the Dardenne brothers, Wenders, Jia Zhangke, and Ceylan all presented masterpieces. In the end, the jury led by American filmmaker Sean Penn unanimously agreed to give the Palme d'Or to Laurent Cantet's "Between the Walls", which was somewhat surprising to the outside world.

In those years, Cannes was actually quite particular about seniority. The works of new directors would generally be first entered into various parallel units, and only after accumulating enough fame would they have the opportunity to be included in the main competition unit. Gontai, who had previously sent his works to the Venice Film Festival, was immediately spotted by Cannes's head, Frémaux, and his work was selected for the main competition unit, and finally won the Palme d'Or. It is understandable that it was a surprise. That night, he received the trophy from Robert De Niro, becoming the first Frenchman to win the Palme d'Or again in 21 years since Maurice Pialat won the award in 1987 for "Under the Sun of Satan".

Between the Walls poster

"Between the Walls" is about the life of an ordinary middle school in France, but it reflects the life of the entire French society from a small point to a large one. It is no wonder that the French film authorities pushed "Between the Walls" to represent France in the competition for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars that year. The film was successfully nominated, but ultimately lost to "Departures" from Japan. After "Between the Walls" was officially released in France, it was also warmly welcomed by the audience and became one of the very few Cannes Palme d'Or films with outstanding box office performance.

After that, Laurent Gonte went to Canada to shoot his first English-language film "Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang". Then he went to Havana, Cuba to shoot the Spanish-language work "Return to Ithaki". In 2017, he returned to France and returned to the non-professional actor shooting method of "Human Resources" and "Between the Walls", directing "The Screenwriter's Workshop", which focuses on a group of young writing class students' free debates.

"The Screenwriters' Workshop" was once again selected by the Cannes Film Festival, but this time it failed to enter the main competition unit. Instead, it was placed in the Un Certain Regard unit, and finally lost to the Iranian film "Lies" in the competition.

"Arthur Rambo", released in 2021, is Laurent Cantet's posthumous work. The film talks about the huge impact of social networks on modern society. The theme is still the current situation of the division of French society that he is concerned about, but it failed to receive good reviews from the media.

Back in 2008, when the craze for Between the Walls swept across France, even then-French President Sarkozy publicly praised Between the Walls, saying it allowed more people to understand the difficulties of the French education system and the hard work of ordinary teachers. This praise did not win the response of the director himself, who rejected the right-wing president's invitation to meet him at the Elysee Palace.

"I don't want to take a photo with Sarkozy, and I don't want to talk about diversity and inclusion with the man who invented the Ministry of National Identity (a French government department created in 2007 and abolished in 2010). Such remarks reflect Laurent Cante's upright and incorruptible personality.