Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina, the first Arab and African director to win the Cannes Palme d’Or, has died aged 91.
His family confirmed last week he died at his home in Algiers on May 23, the same day Cannes screened his 1975 Palme d’Or-winning film Chronicle Of The Years Of Fire in its Cannes Classics programme.
Chronicle Of The Years Of Fire is a drama set between 1939 and 1954, about the Algerian war of independence. He also competed at the festival with The Winds Of The Aures (which won the prize now known as the Caméra d’Or in 1967), Sandstorm in 1982 and Last Image in 1986.
The filmmaker was the oldest living recipient of the Palme d’Or. His final film, Twilight Of Shadows, was submitted as Algeria’s entry to the 2016 Oscars, although was not shortlisted.
Lakhdar-Hamina was born in the mountainous Aurès region of north-east Algeria and raised in a modest farming family. During the Algerian war, his father was kidnapped, tortured and killed by the French army. He deserted the French army in 1958 to join the Algerian resistance in Tunis, the National Liberation Front (FLN). The FLN would then send him to study cinematography at the renowned film school Famu in Prague.
He directed shorts from his temporary Tunisian exile, focusing on the brutality of the occupying French military. After his return to Algeria, he ran Algeria’s news service and led the film arm of the first post-independence Algerian government.
His sons, Malik Lakhdar-Hamina and Tariq Lakhdar-Hamina, are also filmmakers.