The international film community is paying tribute to the late, great David Lynch, who died this week, aged 78.
Italian-American actress Isabella Rossellini, who had her breakthrough role in Lynch’s Blue Velvet, and was Lynch’s romantic partner for several years, posted a photo of the two of them on her Instagram early Friday morning, including the simple caption: “I loved him so much. Thanks for all your kind messages.”
Rossellini played a supporting role in Lynch’s Wild at Heart, which was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990. Speaking to THR at the European Film Awards last December, where she received a lifetime achievement award, Rossellini said she and Lynch remained in close contact since Blue Velvet, regularly texting and speaking on the phone.
On Friday, the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals honored the American auteur for his impact on contemporary cinema.
“It is with infinite sadness that we learn of the passing of David Lynch, a unique and visionary artist whose work has influenced cinema like few others,” the Cannes festival said in a statement following the announcement of the director’s death Thursday. “He leaves behind a rare and timeless body of work, whose films will continue to nourish our imagination and inspire all those who see cinema as an art capable of revealing the unspeakable.”
It is with infinite sadness that we learn of the passing of David Lynch, a unique and visionary artist whose work has influenced cinema like few others. Winner of the Palme d’or at the Festival de Cannes in 1990 for Sailor and Lula, then the Prix de la mise en scène in 2001 for… pic.twitter.com/r7K6LzIDWS
— Festival de Cannes (@Festival_Cannes) January 17, 2025
Lynch was a Cannes regular. He won the Palme d’Or for Wild at Heart in 1990 and best director honors for Mulholland Drive in 2001. He served as jury president in 2002. He also screened his features Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) and The Straight Story (1999) in competition in Cannes and returned to the festival in 2017 for a special screening of his Twin Peaks reboot.
The Venice Film Festival remembered Lynch as “one of the filmmakers who have most influenced contemporary art cinema, thanks to his personal and visionary style and constant search for the limits of cinematographic form.” Venice presented Lynch with its Golden Lion for career achievement in 2006, screening Inland Empire, his last feature film as a director.
In Germany, the Cologne Film Festival, which honored Lynch with a lifetime achievement award in 2010, said with the director’s death “we have lost one of the great visonaires of cinema and of art. The director, painter and musician left behind a trail of wonder and uncertainty that repeatedly broke through the boundaries of the ordinary. His films — from Eraserhead to Blue Velvet to Mulholland Drive — were not just stories, but dream landscapes in which the darkness unfolded behind white garden fences and the uncanny was always tangible. Lynch knew like no other how to transform the banal into the surreal and leave us with a question: What have we just seen – and what does it say about us?”
Hollywood is also mourning Lynch, with the likes of Steven Spielberg, James Gunn, Ron Howard and Judd Apatow paying tribute to the iconic filmmaker.
“I loved David’s films. Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Elephant Man defined him as a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handmade,” Spielberg said in a statement to THR. “I got to know David when he played John Ford in The Fabelmans. Here was one of my heroes — David Lynch playing one of my heroes. It was surreal and seemed like a scene out of one of David’s own movies. The world is going to miss such an original and unique voice. His films have already stood the test of time and they always will.”
Kyle MacLachlan, star of Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and Lynch’s Dune, shared a heartfelt Instagram post with nine photos and a caption that reads: “While the world has lost a remarkable artist, I’ve lost a dear friend who imagined a future for me and allowed me to travel in worlds I could never have conceived on my own.”
In a statement to THR, the American Film Institute called Lynch “an American original…. Across the decades, David’s impact on cinema proved indelible in his films and his art — and he always gave back to AFI — supportive of the storytellers who wrote their own rules and reached for something different. During a seminar on campus, he shared this timeless advice with Fellows: ‘Tell the stories that are inside you. Each person has these stories that come along. Just stay true to those ideas and enjoy the doing of it.’ He will live on in our dreams.”
“There is simply no one like David,” said Directors Guild of America President Lesli Linka Glatter in a statement. “He was a visionary at his core — elevating visual storytelling in film and television to a whole new level, inspiring so many directors to take risks and see new possibilities. He took a chance on me as a young director just starting out when I joined him on Twin Peaks in the early 1990s, transforming my life, and I will be forever grateful for having known him…I join so many directors who have been profoundly impacted by David’s life and work in mourning his loss today.”
James Gunn said on X (formerly Twitter): “RIP David Lynch. You inspired so many of us.”
RIP David Lynch. You inspired so many of us. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/KkZ1WgmzyV
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) January 16, 2025
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