The French director Laurent Cantet, winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival for The Class, died this Thursday at the age of 63, a victim of cancer that he had been suffering from for some time, and whose treatment did not prevent him from working on a film that was in pre-production. Cantet, who also worked as a screenwriter and director of photography, was the author of a committed and humanist cinema that portrayed the lack of morality in contemporary society.
This was reflected in The Class, the title that gave it international recognition with the Oscar nomination for best foreign language film and the Palme d’Or awarded to it by a jury chaired by Sean Penn. In the film he addressed the educational conflicts of a teacher in a marginal, multi-ethnic neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris, inspired by the true story of François Bégaudeau, who also starred in the film.
His interest in education came from his parents, both teachers. Cantet studied audiovisual at the La Fémis school and completed his film studies at the prestigious Institute of Higher Studies in Cinematography (IDHEC) in Paris, where he graduated in 1986. There he coincided with other names who would later stand out in the French industry, such as Dominik Moll, Gilles Marchand and, especially, Robin Campillo, collaborator in the scripts of several of his films.
Already with his debut feature Human Resources (1999), Cantet reflected his nonconformity with the system with a drama starring a young man from a working-class family who after brilliant studies begins to work in the offices of a factory, where he must undertake the dismissal of some workers, including his own father.
In Towards the South (2005) he had the incombustible Charlotte Rampling to narrate the experiences of Western women who refuse to wither in the dictatorship of youth and live passionate relationships with the young Haitians they meet in their vacation paradises.
He was one of the seven filmmakers who filmed 7 Days in Havana, made up of seven episodes that showed the daily lives of different characters during a day in the Cuban capital. And he returned to Havana in Return to Ithaca, a film in which he adapted a novel by the Cuban writer Leonardo Padura about the disillusionment of the Cuban lost generation.
His last film was Arthur Rambo, which competed at the San Sebastian festival in 2021. In it he explored the limits of social networks and the cracks of French society with the story of the descent into hell of a young North African writer when he was attacked for his racist tweets. “I was interested in making a film about the violence and ferocity of social networks, since it gives me the impression that it is an element that is modifying our lives much more than we imagine and that we do not pay too much attention to this phenomenon,” he declared. in an interview with La Vanguardia.
