( dpa ) - US film director Jules Dassin, known for films such as Topkapi and Never on Sunday, died in Athens Monday at the age of 96.
Dassin, was hospitalised with a long illness, but hospital officials did not reveal the cause of death.
He made more than 20 films, but left Hollywood in the 1950s when Communist blacklists swept the film industry.
He married Greek actress and former culture minister Melina Mercouri and moved to Greece. After she passed away in 1994, he took up her quest for the return of the Parthenon Marbles, which once decorated the famed site but had been removed from Greece and put on display in the British Museum.