The medical report on the 91-year-old director’s death said he had chosen to end his life. He “resorted to legal aid in Switzerland for voluntary departure” because he was “suffered by “multiple diseases of incapacity”, Godard’s legal counsel, Patrick Zaneret, told AFP. The influential director was said by his family to have died “peacefully at home” with his wife, Swiss director Annie-Marie Miéville. Godard, who was born in Paris in 1930 to a Franco-Swiss family, lived as a virtual hermit in the Swiss village of Rolle for decades. French newspaper Libération quoted an unnamed source close to the family as saying: “He was not sick, he was just exhausted. So he had made the decision to end it. It was his decision and it was important for him to make it known.” The practice of assisted dying – helping someone to kill themselves at their request – is regulated in Switzerland and allowed if offered without a selfish motive to a person with decision-making capacity to end their own suffering. Libération reported Godard’s 2014 appearance on Swiss television at that year’s Cannes film festival when he was asked about his views on death. He said he did not foresee that he would want to continue living at any cost. “If I’m very sick, I have no desire to be wheeled around … at all,” she said. Asked if he could imagine resorting to assisted dying, he said: “yes”, but added “for now”, saying the choice was “still very difficult”. In France, the law allows doctors to drug terminally ill patients until death, but does not allow assisted dying. In a separate development before Godard’s death was announced, French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed this week that a national debate on the potential expansion of end-of-life options would be held in France, with a citizens’ assembly to consider issues related to euthanasia and assisted dying. . During Macron’s re-election campaign earlier this spring, he had promised to open the issue up for debate, suggesting he was personally in favor of legalizing death by a doctor. Macron told reporters this week that change was necessary but that it was not “an easy or simple matter”.
