Rome, January 20 - Film director Ettore Scola has died in Rome aged 84, sources said Wednesday. He had been in a coma at Policlinico Hospital's heart surgery department since Sunday night, and died late last night surrounded by wife Gigliola and daughters Paola and Silvia. "The tenderness, passion and irony of the last kiss we gave one another will stay with me forever," commented actress Stefania Sandrelli, who worked with the master on several films. "We have loved you so," tweeted actor Alessandro Gassmann paraphrasing the title of Scola's 1974 film We Loved Each Other So (C'eravamo Tanto Amati, 1974), a wide fresco of post World War II Italian life and politics dedicated to fellow director Vittorio De Sica. Scola was born in Trevico, Avellino, Campania, on May 10, 1931. In the course of his long and prolific screenwriting and directing career in which he directed close to 40 films in some 40 years he was nominated for five Academy Awards. In 1978 he received a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film in 1978 for his film A Special Day (Una Giornata Particolare) starring Sophia Loren as a Fascist housewife who befriends her gay neighbor, played by Marcello Mastroianni, on the day he is being exiled by the dictatorship. Scola broke into the film industry as a screenwriter in 1953, and directed his first film, Let's Talk About Women, in 1964. The film won the Golden Prize at the 9th Moscow International Film Festival. In 1976 he won the Prix de la mise en scène at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival for Ugly, Dirty and Bad (Brutti, Sporchi e Cattivi). Scola made further successful films, including A Special Day (1977), That Night In Varennes (1982), What Time Is It? (1989) and Captain Fracassa's Journey (1990). His film Passione d'amore, adapted from a nineteenth-century novel, was adapted by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine into the award-winning musical Passion. He was a member of the jury at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival.