Jean-Luc Godard

Jean-Luc Godard (December 3, 1930 - September 13, 2022) had his elementary and high school education in Switzerland and in Paris, then enrolled at the Sorbonne. During his university days, he developed a passionate devotion to the cinema, spending endless hours at Left Bank cinema clubs and at the Cinémathèque Française, where in 1950 he met the critic André Bazin and future filmmakers François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, and Claude Chabrol, with whom he would later form the nucleus of the French New Wave. Godard began contributing articles and film criticism for La Gazette du Cinéma, then Cahiers du Cinéma. 

Among his many prizes and honors, Godard won the Best Director award at the Berlin Festival for Breathless (1960), a Berlin Jury Prize for A Woman Is a Woman (1961), Berlin’s Golden Bear (Best Film) for Alphaville (1965), and Venice’s Golden Lion (Best Film) for Prenom Carmen (1983). In 1987, he was honored with a Special French César Award for Lifetime Achievement, and in 2010, he received an Honorary Oscar.