Éric Rohmer

Who was Éric Rohmer?

Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer or Jean Marie Maurice Schérer, known as Éric Rohmer, was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter and teacher.

Rohmer was the last of the post-World War II, French New Wave directors to become established. He edited the influential film journal, Cahiers du cinéma, from 1957 to 1963, while most of his colleagues – among them Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut – were making the transition from film critics to filmmakers and gaining international attention.

Rohmer gained international acclaim around 1969 when his film My Night at Maud's was nominated at the Academy Awards. He won the San Sebastián International Film Festival with Claire's Knee in 1971 and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for The Green Ray in 1986. Rohmer went on to receive the Venice Film Festival's Career Golden Lion in 2001.

After Rohmer's death in 2010, his obituary in The Daily Telegraph described him as "the most durable film-maker of the French New Wave", outlasting his peers and "still making movies the public wanted to see" late in his career.