The writer, director and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, who worked in particular alongside Luis Bunuel, Jacques Deray or Milos Forman, died on the evening of Monday February 8, at the age of 89, announced his daughter to AFP.

The writer, who did not suffer from any particular disease, died "in his sleep" at his Paris home, said Kiara Carrière.

“A tribute” will soon be paid to him in Paris and he should be buried in his native village, in Colombières-sur-Orb, in the Hérault, his daughter also said.

Defining himself as a "storyteller", Jean-Claude Carrière has signed around sixty scenarios as well as around 80 books (stories, essays, such as his Dictionaries in love with India and Mexico, translations, fictions, scripts, interviews). 

"The Valladolid Controversy", his most famous novel

"Radically atheist", but "passionate about religion and its deviances", foreign to any fanaticism, he wrote on Buddhism and Hinduism but also on Christianity with his most famous novel, "La controverse de Valladolid", on the conquest of the New World by the Spaniards, available as a play and television adaptation.

We also owe him works on Islam through his translations of Persian poetry, with his wife, the Iranian writer, Nahal Tajadod, by whom he had a daughter.

He was also an actor, playwright and lyricist for Juliette Gréco, Brigitte Bardot or Jeanne Moreau.

As a screenwriter, he is in the credits of major films: "The Diary of a chambermaid", "Belle de jour" and "The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie" (Luis Bunuel), "Taking Off" (Milos Forman), "Borsalino" (Jacques Deray), "The drum" (Volker Schlondorff, Palme d'Or in Cannes), "Danton" (Andrzej Wajda, Louis Delluc prize 1982), "The unbearable lightness of being" (Philipp Kaufman ), "Cyrano de Bergerac" (Jean-Paul Rappeneau), "Le retour de Martin Guerre" (Daniel Vigne) which earned him the César for best screenplay in 1983.

In 2014 he received an honorary Oscar for his work as a screenwriter.

Collaborations with Luis Bunuel and the Dalai Lama

Jean-Claude Carrière has placed his life under the sign of "meetings, friendships and masters of life", like the Dalai Lama with whom he wrote a book or the Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel, with whom he worked for nineteen years , to his death. 

Born on September 17, 1931 in Colombières-sur-Orb, in the Hérault, to winegrower parents who came up near Paris in 1945 to open a café, the young man quickly turned out to be a brilliant student. 

He becomes a scholarship holder, jumps in the social elevator which propels him to Normale Sup.

At the age of 26, he signed his first novel, "Le Lézard", did his military service in Algeria, met Jacques Tati and the beginner Pierre Etaix.

With the latter, he received the 1962 Oscar for best short fiction film for "Happy Birthday".

Bibliophile, passionate about drawing, astrophysics, and wine, fan of Tai-Chi-Chuan (martial art), Jean-Claude Carrière chaired for ten years Fémis, the National School of Image Professions and sound.

Still very active despite his age, in 2018 he wrote a last essay, "The valley of nothingness", and in 2020 co-signed the screenplay for the film "Le sel des larmes" by Philippe Garrel. 

With AFP

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