According to his lawyer, Jean-Luc Godard, one of the most important filmmakers of the 20th century and the founder of the French New Wave, died by assisted suicide.

He passed away at home “peacefully” at age 91, according to his family.

Patrick Jeanneret, Godard’s attorney, verifies a claim in the French newspaper Liberation that he had turned to assisted suicide.

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In Switzerland, the procedure is governed and legal if it is provided without ulterior motivation to a person who has the competence to make decisions in order to end their own suffering.

“Godard had recourse to legal assistance in Switzerland for a voluntary departure as he was stricken with ‘multiple invalidating illnesses,’ according to the medical report,” Jeanneret said.

Godard spent many years virtually isolated in the Swiss hamlet of Rolle.

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“He was not sick, he was simply exhausted,” according to an unnamed family member reported in the French newspaper Libération. “So he had made the decision to end it. It was his decision and it was important for him that it be known.”

Godard’s 2014 interview on Swiss TV during the Cannes Film Festival, where he was asked about his thoughts on dying, was cited by the newspaper. He claimed that he didn’t anticipate wanting to keep alive no matter what. “If I’m too ill, I don’t have any desire to be lugged around in a wheelbarrow… not at all,” he responded. When asked if he could see himself using assisted dying, he responded, “Yes,” but added, “for now,” stating that the decision was “still very difficult.”

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The law in France permits doctors to keep seriously ill patients drugged until death, but it does not permit assisted suicide.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced this week that a national discussion would be held to possibly expand end-of-life options in France, with a citizens’ assembly to consider issues surrounding euthanasia and assisted dying. This announcement came before Godard’s passing was made public.

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Macron had pledged to invite discussion of the matter during his reelection campaign earlier this spring, implying he was personally in favour of making doctor-assisted suicide legal. This week, Macron told journalists that although reform was required, it was not “an easy or simple subject.”