Filmmaker Jacques Rozier, figure of the New Wave, died at the age of 96

The filmmaker Jacques Rozier, figure of the New Wave and author of a handful of films including “Adieu Philippine” and “Maine Océan”, died at the age of 96, announced his collaborator to AFP. He died in hospital overnight from Thursday to Friday, said Michèle Berson, who had worked with him for fifteen years.

“Jacques Rozier has just left us. He was freedom itself, and we will miss him terribly”, reacted the Cinémathèque française, which paid tribute to him on Twitter. “Of the filmmakers of the New Wave, Rozier is the one who wanders. The one who likes everything to go wrong, to better feed his very particular sense of dramaturgy (…)”.

Independent filmmaker

1986 Jean Vigo Prize for Maine OceanRené Clair Prize 1997 for all of his work, Carrosse d’or 2002 in Cannes, Jacques Rozier directed Farewell Filipina (1962), chronicle of youth against the backdrop of the war in Algeria, On the side of Orouet (1973) and The Castaways of Turtle Island (1976). Four films in more than half a century… He shot two more, Fifi martingale (2001), never released theatrically, and The Parisian parrot (2007), which remained unfinished. He has also shot about twenty short films, often noticed, and worked for television. “He was an independent, free filmmaker”underlined Michèle Berson, he was working “without preconceived scenario in advance” and had the ability to “restore the present“.

In 2019, Jean-Luc Godard, who has since died, also hailed the trace left by Jacques Rozier in French cinema: “When Agnès Varda died, I thought: the real New Wave, there are only two of us left. Me and (…) Jacques Rozier who started a little before me”.