Oscar-nominated film director Paul Turner dies

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Melisa Annis

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Paul Turner was born in Cornwall before moving to Wales in the 1980s

Film director and producer Paul Turner has died at the age of 73.

He directed several notable films including Hedd Wyn, which earned an Oscar nomination about the poet’s life and death in World War One.

S4C director Amanda Rees said his contribution to Welsh film and television was “immense”.

She said he was a “man with vision and a fire in his heart for all things Welsh and the Welsh language and his desire to portray that on film”.

“We remember him especially for Hedd Wyn and how Paul succeeded in putting Wales on the world map telling a uniquely Welsh story but with international resonance.” she said.

The film Hedd Wyn gained Wales’ first Hollywood foreign language category Oscar nomination in 1994.

Poet Ellis Humphrey Evans, better known as Hedd Wyn, was killed on the opening day of the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917.

Turner, who lived in Cardiff, was born in Cornwall and learned the Welsh language while working with the BBC in the 1980s. He died on Friday.

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