Greek director Theo Angelopoulos died Tuesday after being hit by a motorcycle, police told the Assoicated Press. He was 76.
He had been shooting his latest film in Athens just blocks away from where the accident happened.
Angelopoulos' deliberate and episodic style made him an arthouse favorite, earning him the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for 1995's "Ulysses' Gaze."
To his fans, he was a consummate filmmaker with a masterful command of the long-shot, but to his detractors he favored an overly ponderous style.
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He began his career as a critic and journalists, but veered into moviemaking following a 1967 military coup in Greece. The self-described leftist's early films such as " Days of '36" and "The Hunters" were rigorously political and often critical of the powers that be.
He continued to turn a critical gaze at his native country and its current debt crisis. His latest film was rumored to be about the financial problems that have rocked Greece in recent years.
In a 2005 interview with Time Out, Angelopoulos described his complicated relationship with his native land,, saying, "Greece isn't a geographical space, but a civilisation: a text by Plato or some other writer. That's what's universal. So when I'm faced with the realties of today's Greece, it hurts."