Robert Bresson

French film director and screenwriter (25 September 1901, Bromont-Lamothe — 18 December 1999, Droue-sur-Drouette). Robert Bresson is often cited among the most influential and renowned filmmakers ever, preempting the development of "minimalist" cinema and hugely impacting the French New Wave directors. Jean-Luc Godard once wrote that Bresson "is the French cinema as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music." Robert Bresson's highly-influential book, Notes on the Cinematographer (1975), is one of the classics on film theory and critique. Numerous prominent and distinguished filmmakers from all over the world and across several generations have quoted Peter Bresson's work as a significant influence and inspiration, including Ingmar Bergman, Werner Herzog, Alain Resnais, Andrei Tarkovsky, Abel Ferrara, Aki Kaurismäki, Abbas Kiarostami, Atom Egoyan, Jim Jarmusch, Jean Cocteau, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Paul Schrader, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jacques Rivette, Chantal Akerman, Jean Eustache, Philippe Garrel, Hal Hartley, Monte Hellman, Louis Malle, Olivier Assayas and Michael Haneke. A decennial list of "250 greatest films" published since 1952 by British Film Institute's Sight & Sound magazine, based on votes of the most reputable and distinguished critics, had more aggregated submissions for Bresson than any other film director ever.