
Guillaume Marbeck plays Jean-Luc Godard in this new film, which is director Linklater’s first primarily in French. The story starts in 1959, as the French New Wave movement is gaining momentum. François Truffaut, a friend and competitor of Godard’s from the influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma, is about to unveil his critically acclaimed debut film, The 400 Blows, at the Cannes Film Festival. Godard, meanwhile, is feeling frustrated. He had hoped to direct a film by age 25, like Orson Welles did with Citizen Kane, but hasn’t. He’s driven to create something – anything – and while he has some ideas, he’s more focused on the act of filmmaking itself than on the final product, thanks to his complex theories about cinema.