Geneva: Jean-Luc Godard, the French-Swiss director who was a key figure in the Nouvelle Vague, the film-making movement that revolutionised cinema in the late 1950s and 60s, died aged 91. French news agency AFP reported that he died "peacefully at home" in Switzerland with his wife Anne-Marie Mieville at his side.
Liberation, quoting an unnamed family member, reported that Godard's death was assisted, which is legal in Switzerland. "He was not sick, he was simply exhausted. So he had made the decision to end it. It was his decision and it was important for him that it be known."
Best known for his iconoclastic, seemingly improvised filming style, as well as unbending radicalism, Godard made his mark with a series of increasingly politicised films in the 1960s, before enjoying an unlikely career revival in recent years, with films such as 'Film Socialisme' and 'Goodbye to Language' as he experimented with digital technology.
The French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted: "We've lost a national treasure, the eye of a genius". He said Godard was a "master" of cinema – "the most iconoclastic of the Nouvelle Vague".
Film-makers who paid tribute included 'Last Night in Soho' director Edgar Wright, who called him "one of the most influential, iconoclastic film-makers of them all".