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Richard Linklater‘s French New Wave tribute “Nouvelle Vague” was always going to find a perfect home at Cannes, and such is the case following the period drama’s rapturous world premiere in competition at the 2025 festival. The film earned a rousing six-and-half-minute standing ovation as the cast hugged each other and leading lady Zoey Deutch blowed kisses to the audience.
The “Nouvelle Vague” premiere was a spirited affair from the start. Linklater and cast member Zoey Deutch were spotted singing along and dancing on the red carpet as they ascended the iconic stairs at the Palais. Before the film started, Linklater hugged and chatted briefly with Quentin Tarantino. The “Pulp Fiction” director, who has premiered several movies at Cannes, enthusiastically clapped for Linklater during the standing ovation. Tarantino was visibly moved by the film.
“It means so much for us to be here tonight. Over a year ago we were filming right here,” Linklater told the crowd as the standing ovation came to an end. “And we all said: ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if we could end up here showing our movie. It would be crazy to be here.’ And here we are! Cinema is magic. It meant so much to us to try and recreate the time and place. It means so much in film history, and it meant so much to each cast member, every crew member. Everybody worked so hard to try and get it right and recreate this moment. And thank you for this moment.”
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In “Nouvelle Vague,” Linklater chronicles the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave classic “Breathless.” Guillaume Marbeck stars as the iconic French filmmaker, with Deutch playing the movie’s leading lady, Jean Seberg, and Aubry Dullin starring as the film’s male star Jean-Paul Belmondo. The movie is Linklater’s first project shot in French.
Critics were just as enthusiastic about the movie as the premiere audience. Variety’s Owen Gleiberman called the movie a highlight of the 2025 festival, writing: “Guillaume Marbeck is so perfect as Jean-Luc Godard he’s uncanny. And so is the whole movie.”
Linklater has often cited Godard as one of his biggest inspirations, making “Nouvelle Vague” a passion project for him. Speaking to press last year, Linklater said that Godard taught him an “absolute love and dedication to cinema. That cinema is its own world that’s worthy of reverence to treat as an elevated, all-encompassing, devote-your-life-to art form. That’s what I’m trying to conjure in that movie. Just to show the absolute love of cineastes.”
Linklater is proving to be a major festival player this year. He attended the Berlin International Film Festival in February to unveil another movie, the Lorenz Hart biographical music drama “Blue Moon,” starring Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley and Andrew Scott. The movie earned strong reviews and won Scott the Silver Bear for supporting performance. Sony Pictures Classics is set to release “Blue Moon” in theaters later this year. Linklater’s other recent movies include “Hit Man” with Glen Powell, which premiered at Venice in 2023 on its way to Netflix streaming success.
