Director Raul Ruiz died in Paris this morning at the age of 70, following a lung infection.

Ruiz was born in Chile in 1941, and left the country during Pinochet’s fascist coup of 1973 and has lived in Paris since.

His first feature was Tres tristes tigres in 1968, which won the Golden Leopard at Locarno.

His most recent film, the lauded four-and-a-half Portugal-set epic Mysteries of Lisbon, is currently in cinemas in the US. It won France’s prestigious Louis Delluc prize.

His films include Time Regained, Klimt, Genealogies of A Crime, Three Lives and Only One Death, The Hypothesis Of The Stolen Painting, Richard III, Shattered Image, The Golden Boat, and The Penal Colony.

The prolific filmmaker worked on more than 100 films, including theatrical works and TV projects both fiction and documentary, and employing several languages and formats (from 35mm to video). He also wrote and directed for the stage. He was also at times a teacher of film studies at Harvard and other international universities.

Earlier this year he shot La noche de enfrente, a Chile-set film inspired by his childhood. Also recently he has worked on projects about the life of French novelist Jean Giono and one based on the memoirs of Napoleon’s generals (which reportedly had frequent collaborator Melvil Poupaud attached to star.)

He had undergone a liver transplant after being diagnosed with liver cancer when he was making Mysteries of Lisbon.

Ruiz is survived by his wife Valeria Sarmiento, a film director and editor.

 

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