Los Angeles, Feb 18 (IANS): Polish director Andrzej Zulawski, who spent most of his professional life in France after irking the Communist government at home, has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 75.

Zulawski died on Wednesday, reports variety.com.

Zulawski’s son Xawery, who himself is a film director, wrote on Facebook late Tuesday that his father was “terminally ill with cancer and undergoing intensive therapy in hospital in Poland”.

Zulawski last directed the film “Cosmos”, which starred Sabine Azema and won the best director award at the Locarno Film Festival in 2015.

The cult director was known for erotically charged psycho-sexual provocative films like “Possession”, and “La femme publique”. Other films in his career included “L’important c’est d’aimer” and “Fidelity”.

Zulawski was born in Lvov, Ukraine, but moved with his father to Czechoslovakia and later to Poland. He studied cinema in France in the late 1950s. In the 1960s, he served as an assistant to Polish film director Andrzej Wajda.

He made his feature directorial debut in 1971 with “The Third Part of the Night”, an adaptation of his father’s novel.

In addition to son Xawery, he is survived by a son, Vincent, that he had with actress Marceau in 1995.