Film Forum

Over 60 years and 140 films, no filmmaker evokes the essence of cinema more than Jean-Luc Godard. He was the French New Wave, and much more: artistic rebel, political provocateur, theorist and professor, enigmatic misanthrope. In search of the “perfect cinema,” he pursued relentlessly an art form that was all-encompassing of love, beauty, revolution — all the while reinventing himself alongside the medium itself. In six parts that move dynamically through Godard’s extraordinary and sometimes confounding evolution — from BREATHLESS (1960) to his Maoist militant period and collaboration with Jean-Pierre Gorin, to his mainstream return with EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF and PASSION, and his magnum opus, HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA — this rich portrait draws from candid new interviews with family, frenemies, and muses (Nathalie Baye, Julie Delpy, Hanna Schygulla). Packed with iconic scenes from his oeuvre, and archival footage featuring intimate, off-script moments with both Godard the filmmaker and Godard the man.

2022     100 MIN.     FRANCE  

Preceded by 

Trailer of a Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars
DIRECTED BY JEAN-LUC GODARD

Godard’s last project before his death in 2022 was initially an adaptation of Belgian author Charles Plisnier’s 1937 novel Faux Passports. The film was never produced, but Godard’s preparatory essay-trailer — a beautifully confounding collage of history and politics, text and image, sound and silence — stands as his final work.

2023     20 MIN.     FRANCE / SWITZERLAND

With support from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Fund

120 MIN. TOTAL     IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES     KINO LORBER

Reviews

On Trailer of a Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars:

“Plays like a distillation and an elucidation of Godard’s last decades of work… This ‘trailer’ reflects both his powerful reprocessing of extant images (including his own) to unite the archive and personal memory—and his still-raging desire to create a new classical cinema in his own image.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker

CRITIC’S PICK. “Filled with cryptic witticisms (‘It’s hard to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if it’s not there’), abstract artwork, photographs, film clips (from Godard’s own NOTRE MUSIQUE) and even Godard himself in voice-over explaining his ideas about [Charles] Plisnier ('He was more like a painter than a writer').”
– Ben Kenigsberg, The New York Times

“A testament to Godard’s legacy as the most unique film director in cinema history…A rare glance into Godard's process in constructing his essay films”  
– Dustin Chang, Screen Anarchy