In 2019, the Italian director received an honorary Academy Award for her achievements in motion pictures.
Lina Wertmüller, the first woman to receive an Oscar nomination for best director, died Thursday in Rome, Italian media reported. She was 93. Her death was confirmed by Italy’s Culture Minister Dario Franceschini. “Italy mourns the passing of Lina Wertmüller, a director who, with her class and unmistakable style, left an everlasting mark on our and the world’s cinema,” Franceschini said in a statement, according to Reuters. The prolific Italian filmmaker and writer was born in Rome on Aug.14,1928. She was hired by Frederico Fellini as an assistant director on the surrealist comedy-drama classic “8½” in 1963 — the same year when she made her directorial feature debut with “The Basilisks,” a drama about the uneventful lives of three young men who live in a small, poverty-stricken village in southern Italy.
