Hungarian filmmaker Miklos Jancso, winner of the best director award at the 1972 Cannes film festival, has died. He was 92.

Jancso's death on Friday after a long illness was announced by the Association of Hungarian Film Artists.

Known for his long shots and for depicting the passage of time in his historical epics merely by changes of costume, Jancso won his Cannes award for "Red Psalm," about a 19th-century peasant revolt.

In the 1960s, critics ranked Jancso alongside such great directors as Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman. However, it was his use of scantily clad women, symbolizing defenselessness, which drew big audiences in prudish communist Hungary.

Jancso was born Sept. 27, 1921, in Vac, a small town north of Budapest.