Alain Resnais, the acclaimed French film director whose 60-year career included such classics as Hiroshima Mon Amour and Last Year in Marienbad, has died aged 91.

His death on Saturday, the day after the Césars French cinema awards and on the eve of the Oscars, came as he prepared to launch his latest film, The Life of Riley later this month.

The film, which stars two of his favourite actors – his wife, Sabine Azéma, and André Dussollier – was awarded the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer prize when it premiered at last month's Berlin film Ffestival. It is based on an Alan Ayckbourn; the playwright and his wife witnessed the film-maker's marriage to Azéma in Scarborough.

Pierre Arditi, another member of Resnais's "troupe" of favourite actors, paid tribute to his friend on Sunday. "The most precious thing I can remember is when he would sit crouched on his long legs, resting his head in his hands, and devoured the actors with his lovely blue eyes as though we were diamonds. And of course when you get a look like that you become a diamond," he told France2 television.

The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, on Sunday hailed Resnais as "a very great talent" who was "universally known". Other tributes poured in on Twitter.

Resnais's 1959 masterpiece, Hiroshima Mon Amour, was his first feature film , and the experimental Last Year in Marienbad, two years later, identified him with French cinema's New Wave. But Resnais refused to be pigeonholed and went on to direct such diverse movies as Providence (1977), Mon Oncle d'Amérique (1980), and Smoking/No Smoking (1999). His films, which explored the themes of time and memory, death and love, are sometimes complex but never dull.

He received a lifetime achievement award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009.