French filmmaker Edouard Molinaro has passed away at the age of eighty-five, reports Steve Chawkins of the Los Angeles Times. Over his career, Molinaro made more than thirty feature films, including the widely acclaimed La Cage Aux Folles (1978), which brought him an Oscar nomination for best director in 1979. The film was later turned into a Broadway play, which won several Tonys, and was adapted into the 1996 film, The Birdcage. Noting his intentions with the film, Molinaro told the New York Times in 1981 that he wanted to “make a comedy enabled [him] to tackle the question [of the gay community being largely represented in dramas and not comedies] in a non-racist way—so people would laugh with, not at, homosexuals.” In a statement paying homage to the filmmaker’s death, France’s President, Francois Hollande, lauded Molinaro for working with some of the best French actors and having a storied career: “Our country lost a great, appealing, and original filmmaker.”