Oscar Winner Marcel Ophuls Dead at 97

Academy Award-winning director Marcel Ophuls has died. He was 97.

The German filmmaker, son of acclaimed director Max Ophuls, died last Saturday of natural causes. He passed away peacefully after watching one of his favorite movies with his family.

Ophuls is best known for his Oscar-nominated The Sorrow and the Pity, a two-part documentary from 1969.

The documentary detailed France’s open collaboration with Nazi Germany due to the government’s desire for power and general antisemitism, and destroyed the commonly-believed incorrect narrative that France and its citizens were enemies of Adolf Hitler in World War II.

The movie was banned in France on TV for over a decade, due to its incisive nature and its takedown of the false WW2 narrative constructed by French president Charles de Gaulle. It focused almost exclusively on the small town of Clermont-Ferrand, and interviewed several French citizens who were farmers, teachers, French Resistance members, and even former Nazi commanders about the ongoings of World War II.

The film is now regarded as a classic, and one of the best documentaries ever made. Ophuls later won an Academy Award for another highly regarded documentary, 1988’s Hotel Terminus, about the life of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie.

Barbie became known as the “Butcher of Lyon” for his brutal and cruelly unique methods of torture utilized on Jewish people living in France. After the Nazis lost, the United States helped Barbie escape capture and hired him for advice on how to properly suppress government resistance from citizens.

Ophuls continued to make movies until he died, with his most recent 2025 project now going unfinished.

He is survived by his wife, Régine, three daughters, and three grandchildren.