Filmmaker Richard Linklater‘s latest, Nouvelle Vague, details the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960). It screened in select theatres on 31 October before its Netflix streaming debut on 14 November, 2025. It definitely did not premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2026.
However, 2026 was Sundance’s last festival in Utah before its move to Boulder, Colorado. It was feeling very nostalgic and reflective, so they invited Linklater to host a live commentary to a packed audience of an equally nostalgic movie, Nouvelle Vague. IndieWire Editor-at-Large, Anne Thompson, joined Linklater to provide insights and behind-the-scenes tidbits about the movie while we watched.
As he pointed out before the screening, he wasn’t really talking over the movie. Unless there were fluent French speakers in the audience, of course, we could still read the subtitles.
Nouvelle Vague translates to “New Wave” in French. It was a revolutionary cinematic artform in the 1950s and 1960s. These films were usually low-budget, shot on location in Paris with light, handheld cameras, to allow for spontaneity and experimentation, e.g. jump cuts. Themes were often existential and focused on youthful, rebellious characters. The filmmakers championed auteur theory, the idea that directors are the “author” of a film.
Many of the filmmakers involved in the French New Wave started as critics for Cahiers du Cinéma magazine, such as François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer, and Jacques Rivette. In the live commentary, Linklater stated that his movie might have followed Godard, but it was about this community of filmmakers and cinephiles. They worked, collaborated, and socialised with each other. Linklater chose to add a name card beneath every new “player” introduced in the movie who was part of the French New Wave.
Nouvelle Vague features a seemingly endless who’s-who of the French New Wave. Only those who are literally 100 years old and were born in the 8th arrondissement, puffing cigarette smoke as they exited the womb, would be able to recognise each person, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to demonstrate this was an expansive, historic movement with many important characters beyond the famous names.
Linklater said that he actually started developing the idea behind Nouvelle Vague around 13 years ago. He told Zoey Deutch approximately ten years ago that he wanted her to portray Jean Seberg, who plays American Patricia in Breathless. Most, if not all, of the rest of the cast and crew were French. Guillaume Marbeck starred as a venerable Godard, and Aubry Dullin utterly sank into the role as happy-go-lucky Jean Paul Belmondo. Frankly, the cast was so pitch-perfect it was as if the ghosts of the actors were reanimated just for this movie.
And that’s the main reason why Linklater didn’t make the movie until now. Godard passed away in 2022, and everything changed. Linklater managed to secure funding entirely from France to produce his movie. In fact, he said the only person still alive who was featured in the movie was probably Jean-Pierre Léaud. He was the main actor in Truffaut’s movie The 400 Blows (1959), and we can see the audience lifting him during the film’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.
He stated that when he shot the scene in which Italian neorealist filmmaker Roberto Rossellini (Laurent Mothe) visits the Cahiers du Cinema office, it felt like he was holding a seance. ‘Rossellini was their Godfather,’ he said.
Linklater was the only American on the crew. Naturally, he wanted to shoot Nouvelle Vague as similarly to Godard’s Breathless as possible, with a few key differences. His crew was much bigger, and used period-accurate handheld Cameflex cameras and film stock (Kodak 5222/Ilford HP5) in a 1.37:1 aspect ratio. No haze, no steadicams, and LEDs were used only to mimic the blinding summer sun in 1959 Paris. Gate weave, digital grain, projector changeover cues, and scratches on the film were added in post-production.
He didn’t use any of Godard’s equipment to film Nouvelle Vague. However, the camera held by cinematographer Raoul Coutard (Matthieu Penchinat) was the camera Godard used to shoot Breathless. I guess that was something else that was easier to acquire after the filmmaker passed.
Godard liked carving out his movies from what he found in front of him, but Linklater couldn’t rely on authentic locations for this period movie. He did shoot on location in Paris, but mostly on the one block that they had total artistic control over for three days. He used stock footage for scenes in Cannes and cars driving along city streets, and he used CGI to remove any trace of modernity, add cobblestones, and other changes you might not have noticed. Linklater also shot intimate, interior scenes on soundstages. Even the metro station in the film is defunct, and is mostly used for film shoots. ‘Black and white film is very forgiving,’ he joked.
Another key difference is that Godard shot Breathless over 20 days, whereas Linklater had 30. With all of that extra time, he filled his script with quotes and references to everyone from C.S. Lewis to Jean-Paul Sartre. ‘The quotes are the most Godardian thing about this film,’ Linklater said. It’s a dialogue filled with platitudes that Jean Seberg makes fun of towards the end. It’s almost like Linklater is poking fun at himself. Just as Jean-Luc Godard revered and deferred to creative geniuses before him, Linklater is doing the same by paying homage to filmmakers he admires, like Godard.
Breathless was a quintessential French New Wave movie as it harnessed the power of the jump cut. Apparently, Godard promised his producer the movie would be 90 minutes. Instead of cutting scenes, he cut action in scenes. Linklater took the opposite approach by shooting long, sweeping scenes with very few cuts. Restrictions and spontaneity made Breathless into the revolutionary movie it became, but Linklater’s goal wasn’t to make a revolutionary movie. He produced a time capsule, a love letter, a eulogy, whatever you would like to call it, to this incredible era of cinema.
He did break one rule. Characters in the film frequently look down the barrel of the lens, which is usually a huge no-no in narrative cinema. Why? ‘Because f*ck the rules,’ Linklater said. Godard was a punk, by his estimation. When you’re anti-establishment, you don’t need to give a reason for your actions.
Nouvelle Vague‘s end credits are a series of snapshots that hit the screen while the incredibly catchy ‘Nouvelle Vague’ by the Three Cool Cats plays. That song will play over and over in my head for the rest of the week, and the film will remain one of my favourites of 2025.
I’d say watching Nouvelle Vague in a theatre full of laughter and Linklater’s soft Texan accent intercepting the dialogue, is the best way to watch it. The second best is at home, with the lights off, a glass of French red, and a tobacco-scented candle filling your nostrils. Cool shades are optional.
