65 Years Later, Richard Linklater Says This Low-Budget Crime Drama Still Holds the Key to a Filmmaking Revolution

Thirteen years ago, Richard Linklater set out to recreate a moment in cinema’s history that launched a subversive movement. In Nouvelle Vague, the king of hangout movies takes audiences back to the scrappy production of first-time director Jean-Luc Godard‘s Breathless (À Bout de Souffle), in a “meta” feat that Collider’s Jason Gorber calls a “tour de force of nostalgic whimsy.”

At a time when young artists were “dissatisfied with the status quo,” an unknown Godard, played in the movie by Guillaume Marbeck, convinced a cast and crew to create something unlike anything audiences had seen onscreen before. Starring Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch) and Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin), Breathless is a drama about two young lovers embroiled in a deadly crime. It was a low-budget, guerrilla-style production that would change the movies forever.

After Collider’s FYC screening with Landmark Theatres, Linklater, producer Michèle Halberstadt, and stars Marbeck and Dullin joined Perri Nemiroff for a Q&A to discuss their making-of of the making of Godard’s feature debut. In this interview, the two first-time feature leads discuss the open collaboration on set and Linklater’s approach to bringing these iconic names back to life, and Halberstadt, who knew Godard personally, shares why she and her husband and producing partner, Laurent Pétin, took a “leap of faith” on Linklater’s dream. And after over a decade, Linklater discusses “living in this cinephile dream,” recreating 1959 Paris, down to the cobblestone streets, and conjuring the spirit of the time.

‘Nouvelle Vague’ Was a Dream Over a Decade in the Making

Richard Linklater reflects on the journey he began 13 years ago.

Image via ARP Sélection

PERRI NEMIROFF: Richard, my first question for you is inspired by something you said in our press notes that really struck me. You said, “Any filmmaker who has been working for a while should, at some point in their career, make a film about the process of making films.” Can you tell me why you felt that way initially, and some takeaways from doing Nouvelle Vague that reinforced those feelings?

RICHARD LINKLATER: Well, I should probably amend that and say it crosses the mind of every filmmaker to probably make a film. Some people make them after their first film. In the genre, Lost in Oblivion, Tom DiCillo’s movie, that’s a good film. It was like his second film. Make one film, make a film about making a film. But yeah, film sets are pretty dramatic. There’s a lot going on. But I didn’t want to make a film about one of my own experiences. I wanted to get into history, and particularly this moment in time is so forever inspiring to filmmakers. So, it wasn’t about, really, one film. It was about a film culture. Paris at that time was so unique, so vibrant. So, it was really just about a group of cinephiles.

I love hearing about how projects evolve along the way, and I heard you say that you started working on this idea 13 years ago. How did you picture the film turning out 13 years ago, and how does it compare to the movie everybody just watched?

LINKLATER: The film you just watched is better than I could have imagined, which doesn’t happen a lot in filmmaking, but I really give it to these guys. There were so many pitfalls. It was like, “Oh no, what if I don’t get the right actors?” So, there was one way to get it right. I was very happy with it. I was amazed we got to make it at all, actually, but for that, I give Michèle and her husband, Laurent [Pétin], my French producers, who made the big leap, [credit]. It’s an unusual film, for sure.

To dig into getting this movie off the ground, Richard and Michèle, can you each recall the green light low, a time when you were like, “Uh oh, maybe we’re never going to make this film?” But then I also want to know the opposite, the thing that happened that made the two of you realize, “It is go time. We’re really going to do this now.”

LINKLATER: You want to jump in, Michèle? Because we had a couple. There was even a moment right before we started, like, “Oh, are we doing this?” Sometimes you’re not even greenlit until you’re shooting, really.

MICHÈLE HALBERSTADT: There comes a time when you have to start pre-production, so we kind of started pre-production not knowing what kind of money we were going to have. We were supposed to start shooting in March, and in January, we found out that a big chunk of money that we expected from national television was not going to happen. So, this was really a moment where we had to decide, my husband and I, “Do we go for it? Do we jump into it or do we stop it?” You have to decide if you take a risk or if you don’t.

And I found out, months later, which I didn’t know, Zoey [Deutch] was preparing for the part, and I would even give her French lessons on Zoom, but what I didn’t know is that she was eager to cut her hair and get blonde, and Rick was saying, “Wait! We’re not there yet. Don’t cut your hair.”

Image via Netflix

LINKLATER: She was just about to cut it on a weekend, and I called her because I had had a meeting and they were like, “We’re not sure.” I was like, “Zoey, have you cut your hair yet? Because don’t do that until I’m absolutely sure.”

HALBERSTADT: The funniest thing is that Zoey translated that into her actress mind as, “Oh my God, they’re considering someone else.”

LINKLATER: Of course. That’s how actors think.

HALBERSTADT: So yes, there were definitely a few days where we really had to decide if we were going to go for it or not.

‘Nouvelle Vague’ Reveals the “Man Behind the Icon”

Linklater and Halberstadt were more interested in a version of Jean-Luc Godard rarely seen.

Image via IMDb

Michèle, I was reading up on your connection with the real Godard. I have a couple of questions about that. First, as someone who crossed paths with him, what were some of your personal priorities when you signed on to become a producer of this movie, things that you knew about the real person that you wanted to make sure came through in this film?

HALBERSTADT: I wanted to make sure people would see the man behind the icon. I think people have an image of Godard. It’s like a brand name now. I wanted them to understand who the guy was, especially when he was a young, thriving guy who was only a critic dying to make a movie, who didn’t even know if he had any talent for it, who was late because all of his friends had already done it, and he was behind. He was an insecure, arrogant, annoying, clever guy, and this is not the image I think people have of Godard. Knowing him and having always seen that name until the end, I really wanted to convey the charm that he had and how clever and funny he was.

I was reading that you worked with someone who was an expert on his work in order to make sure the language was true to the era and to hunt down inaccuracies and debunk false legends. That made me wonder, is there a particular inaccuracy or false legend that you were most excited to debunk in this film?

HALBERSTADT: Well, the fact that he was really very, very funny. People don’t always refer to him as having a strong sense of humor or being a shy guy, but he was both very funny and very shy, and I was very happy to be able to put that forward.

Image via Athos Films Ciné-Tamaris

This is a film that really does demand pitch-perfect casting across the board, and I really think you and the team nailed it here. So, in an effort to touch on two people who were cast in this film, can you both tell us someone who was cast super easily, where it was like the right actor for the role just magically appeared, but then also, what particular role in the movie took the most legwork to find the perfect fit for?

LINKLATER: Well, the easiest was Zoey Deutch, because I’d worked with her for 10 years before, and I just knew she could be [Jean] Seberg. I told her back then, “I’m going to make this movie about the making of Breathless, and I want you to play Seberg.” I said that 10 years before, so that was that was easy.

But everybody else was a process — many months of looking at hundreds of people. I had a great casting director who reached very far and wide to get anyone who might look like them. But you need good actors, too, not just a resemblance, so it’s a fine line. But you’ve got to be very confident you’re going to find them, and when they walk in the room, you go, “That could be them.” But I’d say each part had numerous people who maybe could work, but it’s the acting ability that’s really the final, you know. Who they are, what their personalities are like.

HALBERSTADT: The last one we chose was the makeup girl. I don’t know if you remember. She was the last one.

LINKLATER: Raoul Coutard, the cameraman, was difficult, too, because he’s bigger.

HALBERSTADT: There were so many.

LINKLATER: So, there were some physical limitations, like he’s really tall. We were lucky to find

Matthieu [Penchinat], who was very funny. He’s kind of a comedic actor, so I always saw him as pretty funny.

I felt very blessed the whole time by the French film gods who were blessing us always. We got very lucky and got everything we needed, like the archives, and people gave us stuff. The camera you see in the movie that they’re shooting the movie with is the camera that shot Breathless. We went to the archive where Raoul Coutard left it, like, “Do you still have that Éclair Caméflex?” They were like, “Yeah.” “Is it working?” “Yeah.” “Can we use it?” “Yeah, sure.” So, that happened all the time.

HALBERSTADT: Even if there’s a resemblance, obviously, there’s a way of portraying it. They really embody each of them so perfectly beyond the physical aspect. I think they managed to really find the core of each of them.

LINKLATER: Also, can I say, Guillaume had this, I call it the unearned swagger and confidence of the first-time director. He kind of carried something in with him that was like, “Oh, he’s somebody.”

Meet the New Faces Behind the Timeless Icons

Guillaume Marbeck and Aubry Dullin make their on-screen debuts.

Image via Netflix

Guillaume and Aubry, I have so many questions for the two of you, but I want to backtrack a little because this is a first feature for both of you. I still can’t quite get over how incredible that is so, first off, huge congratulations on that particular feat. But just so everyone can get to know the two of you a little more, I’m going to bring up another quote. Richard said, “The passion for cinema is contagious, and I’m just trying to pass it on.” What film or performance gave you the filmmaking bug? What inspired you and made you know that this was a field you absolutely had to be in?

GUILLAUME MARBECK: To me, it was every movie that I saw when I was a kid. When I saw movies, I felt I needed more. I needed to experience more of the story. I wanted something else. So, I realized just watching the movie and living with those characters for one hour and 30 was not enough. Then I discovered later that there were a bunch of jobs that you can do to make a movie, and so I did all of them because I wanted to become, maybe, a director. So, to know what each person is doing, so I could talk to them and know if they’re bullshitting me, and the last part, the last job that I haven’t done is acting. I think it was the one that scared me the most because you had to be in front of the camera and be vulnerable, and so I rejected that for 10 years. And 10 years after, I did two years of acting school, and then I put up there my pictures and video presentation, and [casting director] Stéphane [Batut] found it three months later. So, I got lucky.

Image via Netflix

AUBRY DULLIN: For me, it’s kind of different because I started with theater. I did theater my whole life. I started very young. I think the movie that changed my vision and that made me want to maybe do cinema is the performance of Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, because I saw it very young, but I was like, “Whoa, this guy is insane.” I saw him in [Bruce Almighty], and then I saw him in The Truman Show, and I was like, “Whoa, this guy can do everything.” This time, I was like, “Okay, I want to do the theater, but also cinema,” because I felt something when I saw this movie. So I’m like, “I want people to feel something when they see me in a scene in a movie.”

Digging into the prep work the two of you did for this film, I know that a big part of it was a significant rehearsal process, which I know Richard prioritizes often. Can you two run us through a few things you learned during that process that teed you up for success when you hit set?

MARBECK: What I experienced was the opposite of what I thought it would be with an American director. I thought it would be a dictator or something [laughs], but in fact, Richard Linklater is the most relaxed and cool guy that you can imagine. In fact, he was just inviting us to create around him. It’s not just me or the crew, it was also all the set designers, hairdressers. Every part of this movie was invited to his movie. We were allowed to offer our views on a scene or a character or a moment or a phrase. I think this [contributed] to make us feel that with this movie, we were in charge, too. We had a part of the movie to do, and it felt like it was our own.

DULLIN: I think I learned everything during this rehearsal part because it was new for everybody, because the old cast, it was kind of his first movie, so we just discussed for, like, a month about the relationship, all the sequences, what we feel. We did all the work before, and when we arrived on the set, everybody knew what we had to do. So, it was just having fun together and just moving in the same direction. Also, I had to do a lot of Jean [Paul Belmondo], so maybe it helped me, too. [Laughs]

LINKLATER: We worked 180 degrees opposite to how they’re making their movie. Just completely opposite.

MARBECK: He gave us a note, a manifesto, in the beginning of the real soul process, and he told us, “You’re not playing the icons. You’re not playing Godard, Belmondo, or Seberg. You’re playing Jean-Luc, Jean Paul, and Jean. You are young people who want to do movies, and you are not sure that this guy, Godard, is going to even be able to finish his movie and make something watchable. So, don’t treat him like he’s a god or something in cinema. He’s just some weird guy.” He told us, also, that “We are not going to make just one take of every shot. We are going to do several because we are recreating ‘59,” and back then they didn’t have an art department, and we had one, and even a VFX department, and there was a lot to do. Even the Arc de Triomphe, we turned it away, like, 90 degrees to make it right.

Image via ARP Sélection

HALBERSTADT: No, we didn’t turn it. You don’t turn the Arc de Triomphe. [Laughs]

LINKLATER: We flipped it. We went to the other side.

MARBECK: So we had to make many more takes.

HALBERSTADT: I just want to say that Rick is really a director who works like he’s really the team coach. In this case, it was crucial because he makes hanging out movies, and these guys have to hang out together. By the time of the rehearsal, you could see in the course of two weeks how they became a team, and he was a coach. This is really how he operates, and it’s so effective because you could see the friendship coming up and how everybody was aiming for the same goal, which was really making this film as good as it could be. You could tell how each of them was so intense in making it the best they could, and that’s really Rick’s tribute.

Richard Linklater Wanted to Party Like It Was 1959

The director shares how he recaptured the magic of filmmaking in late ’50s Paris, France.

Image via Netflix

One thing I wanted to follow up on that was just brought up a little, Richard, you’d said it was important for you to film with roughly the same means available in 1959. Can you tell us a few ways you ran this set in order to do that, but then also pinpoint certain things that 2024 filmmaking afforded you that they didn’t have then?

LINKLATER: The trick we’re doing is we want it to look like it was filmed in ‘59 by, obviously, we’re kind of erasing cinema language history from that point on. I wanted every shot in the movie to feel like it’d fit into a nouvelle vague film, ‘59 to ‘62, something like that. They didn’t have big budgets, so they didn’t have cranes, they shoot off balconies, simple car mounts. Just the language that they were using, we were going to be that. So, there were no unmotivated dolly moves or camera moves like [Bernardo] Bertolucci, or something that’s coming up in the future. So, we were at that time. But like Guillaume said, they didn’t have an art department, they didn’t have a sound department, they didn’t have costumes, anything. They were like a student film, practically. We had to do everything. We had to recreate.

So, what we’re doing is a little bit of a magic trick, in a way, but I still wanted it to feel that loose and fun, and I think we did. We kind of achieved that as a group. It was just that we had to create all that. But we had a department that couldn’t have imagined a visual effects department, too, so lots of deep backgrounds. I don’t want it to feel that way, of course. I don’t want to look at this, and go, “Oh, what a great job of visual effects,” but they’re there, for sure. Sixty-four years later, Paris is a well-preserved city, but the first floor of everything is different. The streets are different. They have these annoying little, they call them sticks, these metal posts line all the roads. What year did they do those? Those are so annoying.

HALBERSTADT: Ten years ago.

LINKLATER: They’re kind of narrow streets, and I said, “Oh, they’re doing that for pedestrian safety, right? So cars don’t hit people.” And they’re like, “No, they don’t care about that. They just don’t want cars parking on the sidewalks.” But those are everywhere, so you have to pay, like, €200 to cut them down, or if they’re in the background, we could just erase them.

But the secret, most valuable player of our movie is this guy Benjamin [Blatière], from the visual effects, who was like, “Okay, we’ve got all that.” The street where Belmondo dies, a famous street there, with those beautiful cobblestones, well, we go there and it’s asphalt. [Laughs] So, it’s like, “Oh, okay.” So, we have to create that. But that’s many months back and forth. But they can do it now. Even three years ago, it would have been impossible. We would have had to lay down green streets or something. But now, I would say, “Can you do that?” And he would look up and go, “Yeah. Yeah, we can do that.” That happened, like, 180 times in the movie. Like, “Can you get rid of that motorcycle?” “Yeah, yeah.” “Can you make the lights?” “Oh, yeah.” There were only a couple of times where he said, “Oh, watch out. We can’t…” So, that was a necessary part of this movie. But we controlled our immediate environment — extras, obviously, cars, wardrobe. That was the fun part. But beyond that, it needed a lot of work.

MARBECK: Also, we had fun with the wheelchair in our movie, but they had a wheelchair, too, and they were doing the same thing.

LINKLATER: Two wheelchairs interacting. Yeah, we had the film crew, and then we had our crew right next to it. So, it was a pretty meta experience.

MARBECK: And sometimes we crashed into each other. [Laughs]

LINKLATER: Well, Guillaume is directing that movie, right? He’s the director. He’s empowered. He’s got this command of the crew and everything. Then, we’d say cut, and he would just kind of keep directing the movie. I would have to remind him sometimes he’s acting like a director, not the director of the movie. But I like that about him.

MARBECK: I was living the dream.

Richard Linklater Revives the “Punk Rock” Era of Cinema

“There’s always a revolution going on…”

Image via Netflix

I was hoping you’d bring up visual effects. I’m in awe of that art form in general, but in particular, my jaw is on the floor whenever I see great invisible visual effects, and your movie is just packed with them.

LINKLATER: That’s the best thing about my 13-year experience on this. We could not have achieved it back then. And I wasn’t consciously waiting. I always knew it would be a big challenge whenever we did it, but it was good timing, for sure.

HALBERSTADT: But invisible was really the word, in that case. You really made a fantastic world… Because very often when you have VFX on a period movie, and you’re like, “Oh, they did that street well,” or, “They did the building well,” but it looks too clean. It looks false. But they really managed to make it look real.

I love this industry. I am always reaching for the silver lining, hope for the future, and at one point in our press notes you said, “From where we stand today, Breathless is at the midpoint of cinema history. It now seems like the perfect moment to remind ourselves that cinema is eternally capable of reinventing itself.” Is there anything you see happening in the industry right now that signals to you it is reinventing itself for the better?

LINKLATER: I think in terms of world cinema, this was 65 years ago. Film is 130 years old; it’s the exact middle point. It was a revolutionary film, but there’s always a revolution going on in cinema. There kind of has to be in young people who are making their first films. They were kind of dissatisfied with the status quo of the French film industry at that time. They thought it was lame and just old, and standard narratives. They were just bored with it. Out of this boredom and discontent comes, you know, you see it in all art forms — punk rock. They were kind of the punk rock of cinema at that time. But that is perpetual. It has to be for the artist, the interior of the artist. You have to be having that revolution. It’s going on all the time, everywhere. When you see a trend, you see maybe a country or a region where there’s a lot of different films coming out of, you go, “Oh, that’s good!” You just have to look for it.

Now, what I speak to is kind of more of an independent one. I don’t see that happening in the studio system, necessarily. That’s changed so much just in my few decades here, so I don’t know what’s going on there. But with world cinema and the individual to make films, that’s wide open, always. I think technology is your friend, and so many films get made now. It was really difficult back then to make a film. That’s why we have that last note, 162 films from there. That was an extraordinary number, extraordinary, within the French film industry. Now there are thousands of first-time filmmakers every year because you can do them so inexpensively. The challenge is, obviously, getting them seen.

‘Nouvelle Vague’ Was a “Séance” for Cinema Rebels

“I just felt I was living in this cinephile dream.”

Image via Netflix

That tees up my last question for all of you. It’s a question I’ve been in the habit of ending on quite a bit recently, but also, I wanted to make a point to end on it here just because I’ve watched a lot of the interviews you’ve done, and I feel like this sentiment is oozing out of all of you. I was talking to another director recently who made a point to stop and emphasize how happy it made him to see his cast and crew take such pride in their work and have such joy on set while doing it. For each of you, can you tell me the single moment of making Nouvelle Vague that brought you the most joy as an artist?

LINKLATER: There were so many special moments in this movie that I just felt I was living in this cinephile dream. But at the end of the first week, we had a scene at the cinema, where Rossellini’s in town and everybody shows up. The Left Bank… Our film’s mostly the [25:40] crowd, but there are different groups around town — Agnès Varda, Jacques Rivette, and filmmakers from all over kind of in one spot. So, we cast extras who look very much like those people, and we felt this recreated the kind of cinema office of that time. All of our filmmakers were there, obviously, and then there were all these other filmmakers, and Hubert [Engammare], my great first assistant, would introduce them, like, “Here’s Jacques Demy and Agnès Varda,” and they would walk in the door where we were placing extras, and the crew would just get quiet, and we’d watch them walk in.

This whole movie felt like a séance. Not one of them is still with us. Not one of the people in this movie is still with us, but they were all there. My script supervisor, Cami [Arpajou], came up and she had tears in her eyes, like, “Why am I so emotional like they’re all here?” It’s like we had conjured this up through our efforts and everything. So, to see our guys intertwine, I don’t know, you create these really special moments, but they’re real. They’re real in our fictional world. We were all very affected by their presence. So, like I said, the film gods were with us, but so were all these people. The séance thing was real. They were all back together again, and they were really happy. It was ‘59. It was a great point in their life, and that’s why we were making the film. So, I’ll never forget that film. I’ll never forget that. It was like, “Holy crap.”

MARBECK: For me, it’s when I discovered the room where Belmondo and Seberg are in bed together. I remember when I watched Breathless, I had this thought that I wanted to go into this room, that I wanted to experience what it was to be in this room because it looks so tiny, and they filmed these incredible moments together. When I got to the set, they had rebuilt it because the hotel is gone. It was destroyed. Maybe they rebuilt it, but it’s different rooms. It’s not the same. So, when I entered it, they just made it look the same, exactly, and I was struck by lightning, and I felt like, “I’m really here. I’m really in those walls, and this is happening right now.”

The day after we shot this scene, the walls were gone. I told them, “What are you doing with those?” And they said, “We’re just moving them to the trash.” And I told them, “But there are going to be millions of people who want to experience this!” But it’s how a movie goes. I said, “Okay, well, I’m lucky.”

LINKLATER: The productions are ephemeral. You build a set, something magic happens, and then it’s gone. They need the space for something else. That’s over, but we captured it. It’s on film for always, forever. So, that’s kind of the deal in cinema.

MARBECK: During the lunch break, I used to eat very fast so I could go to the room and be alone. I just enjoyed my time there.

Image via ARP Selection

HALBERSTADT: Guillaume, I have a secret for you. I kept the teddy bear. It’s in my office.

MARBECK: Wow! Lucky you.

DULLIN: For me, it’s strange, but it’s when we shot the death of Belmondo. I took a lot of pleasure to die. [Laughs] It was in the real streets that it was shot in Breathless. I remember in the street there, there is this picture of Belmondo playing poker, dying. When we shot that, it was just so funny. I was like, “Okay, we’re in history.” It’s just crazy doing that. I remember, maybe we made, like, three takes, and I just enjoyed the three takes. I was like, “Let’s make more takes!” But we didn’t have time.

LINKLATER: Aubry had to fall. If you see in the film, he falls, and his feet go up. So, he really takes a big fall, but he did it every time, like boom, and then his feet would come up. But yeah, that was magical to be back at those locations. Should we tell that it was raining that day? Wanna tell the Seberg ghost story?

HALBERSTADT: Yes.

LINKLATER: So, we filmed two days in that area because there were a number of scenes to do. The second day, it was pouring rain all morning and we weren’t able to shoot. We were just hanging out in a cafe in another location, and Jean Seberg is buried about 200 meters from there in the Montparnasse cemetery. We’d been there before, so we kind of left her a note, but it’s lunch time, and Zoey, we’re just waiting for the weather to clear or something, and she goes, “Do we want to go visit Jean?” We were like, “Yeah, it’s right over there. Let’s do it.” We all got umbrellas and we walked over there.

It’s different this time. We had been there before, but she’s now dressed as Jean in her most famous scene ever. She’s got her famous dress, her hair. She’s Jean Seberg over in the graveyard. So, we’re approaching the grave, and Zoey got a little ahead of us, and as we got closer, it quit raining. Then, when Zoey got to the grave, the sun came out. Can you believe it? But I realized we missed an opportunity there. I mean, that’s what happened, but I thought, because it’s kind of a famous spot, and people go and leave things, I thought, “Ah, we should have hid her behind a gravestone,” so for the next fan who came and did something, she should just walk by. We missed an opportunity, it strikes me.

HALBERSTADT: To me, it’s a strange moment of the shoot. It’s the same day, the end of the day, so people were we were all exhausted because it had been raining, and we had to really do the day in three hours. That day, each department often gives a drink to the rest of the team, and that day, the cinematography team was getting a drink. Everybody was tired. It was 7:00 or 8:00 p.m., humid all day. They really just wanted to go and have a drink, but we still had to do the close-up of Zoey.

Image via ARP Selection

Hubert, the first AD, who I adore, really, he’s a genius, came to me and said, “I think we’re going to wrap early.” I said, “What about the close-up?” And he said, “Well, you know,” because it’s so well documented, we know exactly what they shot, and Hubert said, “They didn’t do the close-up the same day as the street, so we don’t have to do it today.” And Zoey was in a specially tired and nervous state that day, and I said to Richard, “Don’t you think we should do it now?” And he said, “Yeah, but everybody’s gone.” So the head of the production came with me and held the reflector for the light, and it was nearly a second unit team who made that famous shot because the guys wanted to go and have the drink, and that’s how we saved the the day was that shot, which was perfect and didn’t need many takes. But sometimes, when you know too well, they said, “Well, they didn’t shoot it the same day. Why should we shoot it tonight?”

LINKLATER: A different background. Yeah. We knew every little detail. They filmed it somewhere else.

HALBERSTADT: So every time I see it, I see the rain and the guys tired, and the drinks afterwards, and Zoey saying, “Let’s do it now.”

MARBECK: Yeah, because Zoey was ready from, like, eight in the morning, and she hadn’t shot a shot during the whole day. So, she was waiting for this, and then they said, “No, we’re going to do it tomorrow.” [Laughs] “No, we’re going to do it now!”

LINKLATER: Zoey worked so hard. Her performance works at three different levels, obviously, and she worked so hard. I’m so proud.

MARBECK: And she doesn’t speak a word of French. She had to learn it all. And she hasn’t done any ADR for the movie.

HALBERSTADT: Yeah. We do it in the studio afterwards. She didn’t do one minute of it. Nothing. She was perfect.

She’s something else in this. You all deliver incredible work. Everyone can spread the word! Nouvelle Vague is in select theaters right now, and it hits Netflix on November 14th.

LINKLATER: In 35 millimeter, too. Tell people. All this complaining about film, come watch it on film.

Release Date

October 31, 2025

Runtime

105 Minutes

Director

Richard Linklater

Writers

Holly Gent, Laetitia Masson, Michèle Pétin, Vincent Palmo Jr.

Producers

Laurent Pétin

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  Guillaume Marbeck

  Jean-Luc Godard

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