French film director Jean-Jacques Beineix is dead.

He died on Thursday, January 13th at the age of 75, his family told Agence France Presse on Friday.

Beineix came to prominence with his first film, “Diva”, in 1980, and achieved wider international fame in 1986 with the movie “Betty Blue”, starring Jean-Hugues Anglade and Beatrice Dalle.

Critic Ginette Vincendeau defined the films made by Beineix and others as “youth-oriented films with high production values.

In late 2006, Beineix published a first volume of his autobiography, Les Chantiers de la gloire (in French only). The title alluded to the French title of Stanley Kubrick’s film, Les Sentiers de la gloire (Paths of Glory).

In 1986, Jean-Jacques Beineix directed Betty Blue (original title: “37°2 le matin”), in which Béatrice Dalle and Jean-Hugues Anglade appeared.

In 1987, that film was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and in the same category at the same year’s British Academy Film Awards and Golden Globes.

It won the 1986 Montréal World Film Festival’s Grand Prix des Amériques and Most Popular Film awards and, in 1987, the Boston Society of Film Critics award for best foreign language film and one – Best Poster – of the nine Césars for which it was nominated. He directed Roselyne et les lions in 1989, IP5: L’île aux pachydermes [fr] in 1992 and Mortel Transfert in 2001.

The 1992 Seattle International Film Festival awarded Beineix its Golden Space Needle Award for Best Director on the strength of Betty Blue and IP5: L’île aux pachydermes.

Jean-Jacques Beineix created his own production company in 1984, Cargo Films, to keep artistic independence. Betty Blue (37°2 le matin) was his first film produced by Cargo Films.

Jean-Jacques Beineix was the executive producer of all films produced by Cargo Films.

In 2008, Jean-Jacques Beineix directed a corporate film of CNRS, 2 infinities (L2i).

This film was shown in October 2008’s New York Imagine science film festival.