French film director Claude Miller dies at 70 The award-winning French film director, Claude Miller, has died in Paris at the age of 70 after a long illness. He was seen as a natural heir to his mentor François Truffaut, one of the founders of French New Wave cinema. Miller studied under him and many of his films used the same production personnel. He won the Jury Prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival for "La Classe de Neige" or "Class Trip," the story of a boy on a skiing trip who suffers anxiety attacks that bring on nightmares. Perhaps Miller's best known film was "Garde à Vue," a psychological thriller seen as a breakthrough movie for the director when it was released in 1981. More about: Cinema, Death, France