We take a break from our usual cinema reviews as James Drew remembers the life and work of Anthony Mingella, who died this week at the age of 54.

His films have won awards and audiences the world over - Expatica marks the passing of British filmmaker Anthony Mingella, who died on 18 March aged 54.

He won an Academy Award in 1997 for his direction of The English Patient, which garnered a total of nine Oscars, including best picture - after previously working in television, his filmmaking debut came in Truly Madly Deeply (1990) a theatrically-released made-for-television production.

His deep love of literature and the language of film inspired such works as The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and Cold Mountain (2003) but, sadly, Anthony Mingella, following his recently completed work on The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, an adaptation of an Alexander McCall Smith novel, filmed in Botswana for HBO and the BBC, will not be adding to his repertoire, following his death on 18 March 2008 due to complications from surgery for tonsil cancer.

Born to Italian ice-cream manufacturing parents on the Isle of Wight, off the coast of England in 1954, Minghella's lush films, often with complicated themes, demonstrated his gift for building fully realized worlds within worlds, and this talent also found its expression in opera - Minghella directed an acclaimed staging of Madama Butterfly in 2006, and had been commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera to direct and write the libretto for a new work by the composer Osvaldo Golijov, due to be premiered in the 2011-12 season. He also recently stepped down from his position as chairman of the British Film Institute, an organization that promotes making films in Britain.

Minghella is survived by his wife, Carolyn Choa, who choreographed the Butterfly production; his son, Max; his daughter, Hannah; his parents, Eddie and Gloria Minghella; his brother, Dominic; and three sisters: Gioia, Loretta and Edana.

James Drew