Nouvelle Vague

Screened in the main competition at Cannes, Richard Linklater’s work is a remarkable film about filmmaking; a love letter to New Wave cinema and a conscious revival of its style, celebrating everyday life, documentary-like realism, and a lightness free of moralising. Working with a perfectly cast young ensemble featuring Guillaume Marbeck as Jean-Luc Godard, Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg, and Aubry Dullin as Jean-Paul Belmondo, Linklater crafts a relaxed, unpretentious portrait of an artist in the act of creation. The film pays tribute to Godard and, more broadly, to all rebellious filmmakers who challenge convention. This is a nostalgic ode to the youthful, unrestrained spirit of filmmaking that Godard embodied at the time and with which one of America’s most significant independent directors now aligns himself.