ROME - Film director Ettore Scola, a leading figure in Italian cinema for more than three decades, has died in Rome aged 84.

  He had been in a coma at the heart surgery department of Policlinico Hospital since Sunday night, and died surrounded by his wife Gigliola and daughters Paola and Silvia.

  "The tenderness, passion and irony of the last kiss we gave one another will stay with me forever," commented actress Stefania Sandrelli, who worked with the master on several films.

  Scola was born in Trevico, Avellino, Campania, on May 10 1931. In the course of his long and prolific screenwriting and directing career in which he directed close to 41 films and wrote the screenplay for almost 90, he was nominated for five Academy Awards. 

  In 1978 he received a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film in 1978 for his film A Special Day (Una Giornata Particolare) starring Marcello Mastroianni as a persecuted radio journalist and Sophia Loren as a sentimental housewife, meeting against a backdrop of rising fascism in 1930s Italy.

  After entering the film industry as a screenwriter in 1953, Scola directed his first film, Let's Talk About Women, in 1964. The film won the Golden Prize at the 9th Moscow International Film Festival. In 1976 he won the Prix de la mise en scène at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival for Ugly, Dirty and Bad (Brutti, Sporchi e Cattivi).

  Scola made further successful films, including A Special Day (1977), That Night In Varennes (1982), What Time Is It? (1989) and Captain Fracassa's Journey (1990). His film Passione d'amore, adapted from a nineteenth-century novel, was adapted by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine into the award-winning musical Passion. 

 Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, paid tribute to Scola, saying he was a “master” of the screen “with an ability that was as incredible as it was razor-sharp in reading Italy, its society and the changes it went through”, noting that his death “leaves a huge void in Italian culture”.

  Dario Franceschini, the Italian minister of culture and tourism, also took to Twitter to comment on his death, saying that Scola was “a great teacher, an amazing man, young until the last day of his life.”

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