Tributes have begun to pour in for Oscar-winning director Bernardo Bertolucci, who died Monday at the age of 77.
“A giant of Italian filmmaking, he will remain forever a leading light in world cinema,” the Cannes Film Festival tweeted. Bertolucci served as jury president at Cannes in 1990 and won an honorary Palme for lifetime achievement in 2011.
Bertolucci also twice presided over the Venice Film Festival’s jury, 30 years apart, in 1983 and 2013. “He will be remembered among the greatest masters of Italian and international cinema,” the festival said.
Famous for such major works as “Last Tango in Paris” and “The Conformist,” Bertolucci was the only Italian to win a best director Oscar, an accolade he picked up for “The Last Emperor,” which scored nine Academy Awards in all.
Actor Antonio Banderas lamented the passing of “a master of filmmakers. Thanks for so much talent!”
Carlo Chatrian, the chief of the Locarno Film Festival and artistic director Berlin Film Festival starting in 2020, said that cinema had “lost one of its poets.”