Alain Resnais

Known for: Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

Alain Resnais directed Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and Last Year at Marienbad (1961), two films that dismantled linear narrative and the distinction between memory and present experience with a formal invention that still has no real successor. He had begun as a documentary filmmaker, most notably with Night and Fog (1956), a 32-minute film about the Nazi concentration camps that remains among the most morally serious of all documentaries. He continued directing until his death at 91.