Laemmle Theatres

Sing Out, Sing Proud: Laemmle’s Christmas Eve Fiddler on the Roof Sing-Along Returns

November 19, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 1 Comment

For many, Christmas Eve brings rituals of light, warmth, and gathering. And at Laemmle Theatres, one of our most cherished traditions is a celebration of all of those things—in song, in community, and in the spirited, big-hearted world of Fiddler on the Roof. This year, we’re thrilled to bring back our annual Fiddler on the Roof Sing-Along, playing the evening of December 24th at the Laemmle NoHo, Newhall, Claremont, and Glendale, and with both matinee AND evening showings at the Royal and Town Center. Get your tickets while you still can!

Whether you’ve been joining us for years or will be stepping into Anatevka for the very first time, the invitation remains the same: Come lift your voice, lean into the music, and share in a night that honors joy, resilience, and the freedom to celebrate together.

Norman Jewison’s 1971 classic, adapted from the long-running Broadway musical, remains one of the most beloved works of American cinema. Based on Sholem Aleichem’s “Tevye and His Daughters,” the film follows Tevye the milkman—played with iconic warmth and humor by Topol—as he navigates tradition, change, and the unruly love stories of his five daughters in a quaint Russian village at the turn of the 20th century.

The film’s emotional range is extraordinary: exuberant one moment, aching the next. “TRADITION” explodes with communal energy; “IF I WERE A RICH MAN” turns longing into musical ecstasy; “SUNRISE, SUNSET” captures the fleeting nature of time; “ANATEVKA” balances sorrow with wry endurance. These songs do more than entertain: they hold memory, identity, and cultural inheritance inside their melodies.

And, in the shared space of a sing-along, their meaning only deepens. There’s something almost sacred about hundreds of voices rising together in laughter, lament, and love.

Laemmle’s Christmas Eve Fiddler tradition began as an affirmation, a celebration of the freedom to gather openly, joyfully, and Jewishly at a time of year when many in earlier generations felt they had to retreat from view. In light of history (as well as events ongoing today), coming together to sing feels not just festive, but vital.

This event has always been more than a screening. It’s community theater meets holiday catharsis: an evening where people dress as their favorite characters, lean fully into their off-key harmonies, and rediscover the beauty of cultural expression shared in public. Children, grandparents, longtime fans, first-timers—All are welcome in this communal chorus.

So come ready to sing at the top of your lungs, or simply to enjoy the joyful noise around you. Costumes are enthusiastically encouraged. Families are warmly invited; the film is rated G, though some themes may be complex for young children.

And remember: Fiddler sells out every year. If tradition teaches us anything, it’s not to wait for a miracle—so grab your tickets early.

Saving the Screen: Pope Leo XIV on Cinema’s Cultural Necessity

November 18, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

In this profound address to the world of cinema this past Saturday, the Pope championed the theatrical, movie-going experience, declaring that cinemas are not just places of entertainment, but “cultural facilities” and the “beating hearts of our communities.”

He emphasized the greater purpose of film, stating: “Cinema is a workshop of hope, a place where people can once again find themselves and their purpose.”

We appreciate his deep understanding of the role that movie theaters play, elevating them from mere entertainment to a vital cultural and maybe even a spiritual necessity.

We are sharing his speech in full, below.

Saving the Screen: Pope Leo XIV on Cinema's Cultural Necessity — Photo by Simone Risoluti – Getty Images

Pope Leo XIV speaking at the Vatican on Saturday, November 15, 2025

Dear brothers and sisters,

Although cinema is now over a century old, it is still a young, dreamlike and somewhat restless art form. It will soon celebrate its 130th anniversary, counting from the first public screening by the Lumiere brothers in Paris on 28 December 1895. From the outset, cinema was as a play of light and shadow, designed to amuse and impress. However, these visual effects soon succeeded in conveying much deeper realities, eventually becoming an expression of the desire to contemplate and understand life, to recount its greatness and fragility and to portray the longing for infinity.

Dear friends, I am happy to greet and welcome you. I also express my gratitude for what cinema represents: a popular art in the noblest sense, intended for and accessible to all. It is wonderful to see that when the magic light of cinema illuminates the darkness, it simultaneously ignites the eyes of the soul. Indeed, cinema combines what appears to be mere entertainment with the narrative of the human person’s spiritual adventure. One of cinema’s most valuable contributions is helping audiences consider their own lives, look at the complexity of their experiences with new eyes and examine the world as if for the first time., In doing so, they rediscover a portion of the hope that is essential for humanity to live to the fullest. I find comfort in the thought that cinema is not just moving pictures; it sets hope in motion.

Entering a cinema is like crossing a threshold. In the darkness and silence, vision becomes sharper, the heart opens up, and the mind becomes receptive to things not yet imagined. In reality, you know that your art form requires concentration. Through your productions, you connect with people who are looking for entertainment, as well as those who carry within their hearts a sense of restlessness and are looking for meaning, justice and beauty. We live in an age where digital screens are always on. There is a constant flow of information. However, cinema is much more than just a screen; it is an intersection of desires, memories and questions. It is a sensory journey in which light pierces the darkness and words meet silence. As the plot unfolds, our mind is educated, our imagination broadens, and even pain can find new meaning.

Cultural facilities, such as cinemas and theaters, are the beating hearts of our communities because they contribute to making them more human. If a city is alive, it is thanks in part to its cultural spaces. We must inhabit these spaces and build relationships within them, day after day. Nonetheless, cinemas are experiencing a troubling decline, with many being removed from cities and neighborhoods. More than a few people are saying that the art of cinema and the cinematic experience are in danger. I urge institutions not to give up but to cooperate in affirming the social and cultural value of this activity.

The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what “works,” but art opens up what is possible. Not everything has to be immediate or predictable. Defend slowness when it serves a purpose, silence when it speaks and difference when evocative. Beauty is not just a means of escape; it is, above all, an invocation. When cinema is authentic, it does not merely console but challenges. It articulates the questions that dwell within us and sometimes even provokes tears that we did not know we needed to express.

In this Jubilee Year, the Church invites us to journey towards hope. Your presence here from so many different countries, and your artistic work in particular, is a shining example. Like so many others who come to Rome from all over the world, you too are on a journey as pilgrims of the imagination, seekers of meaning, narrators of hope and heralds of humanity. Your journey is not measured in kilometers but in images, words, emotions, shared memories and collective desires. You navigate this pilgrimage into the mystery of human experience with a penetrating gaze that is capable of recognizing beauty even in the depths of pain, and of discerning hope in the tragedy of violence and war.

The Church esteems you for your work with light and time, with faces and landscapes, with words and silence. Pope Saint Paul VI once spoke to artists, saying: “If you are friends of genuine art, you are our friends,” recalling that “this world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair [Address of Pope Paul VI to Artists, 8 December 1965]. I wish to renew this friendship because cinema is a workshop of hope, a place where people can once again find themselves and their purpose.

Perhaps we could bear in mind the words of David W. Griffith, one of the great pioneers of the seventh art. He once said, “What the modern movie lacks is beauty, the beauty of the moving wind in the trees.” His reference to the wind cannot but remind us of a passage from John’s Gospel: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” [3:8]. In this regard, dear seasoned and novice filmmakers, I invite you to make cinema an art of the Spirit.

In the present era, there is a need for witnesses of hope, beauty and truth. You can fulfill this role through your artistic work. Good cinema and those who create and star in it have the power to recover the authenticity of imagery in order to safeguard and promote human dignity. Do not be afraid to confront the world’s wounds. Violence, poverty, exile, loneliness, addiction and forgotten wars are issues that need to be acknowledged and narrated. Good cinema does not exploit pain; it recognizes and explores it. This is what all the great directors have done. Giving voice to the complex, contradictory and sometimes dark feelings that dwell in the human heart is an act of love. Art must not shy away from the mystery of frailty; it must engage with it and know how to remain before it. Without being didactic, authentically artistic forms of cinema possess the capacity to educate the audience’s gaze.

In conclusion, filmmaking is a communal effort, a collective endeavor in which no one is self-sufficient. While everyone recognizes the skill of the director and the genius of the actors, a film would be impossible without the quiet dedication of hundreds of other professionals including assistants, runners, prop masters, electricians, sound engineers, equipment technicians, makeup artists, hairstylists, costume designers, location managers, casting directors, special effects technicians and producers. Every voice, every gesture and every skill contributes to a work that can only exist as a whole.

In an age of exaggerated and confrontational personalities, you demonstrate that creating a quality film requires dedication and talent. Thanks to the gifts and qualities of those whom you work alongside, everyone can make their unique charisma shine in a collaborative and fraternal atmosphere. May your cinema always be a meeting place and a home for those seeking meaning and a language of peace. May it never lose its capacity to amaze and even continue to offer us a glimpse, however small, of the mystery of God.

Embed from Getty Images

Bearing Witness: Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk

November 11, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

In Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, Iranian-born director Sepideh Farsi and Palestinian photographer Fatma Hassona craft a documentary of haunting immediacy. Through more than 200 days of video calls, the film charts Hassona’s life under siege in Gaza from 2024–25, capturing the everyday resilience of a young photojournalist who insists on maintaining her ideals even as bombs fall and hope frays.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear Farsi discuss her revolutionary project with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge ahead of its impending run at the Laemmle Monica and Glendale theaters beginning November 14th.

The filmmaking is itself quietly radical. Farsi, barred from Gaza, connects remotely via smartphone, creating a frame-within-a-frame aesthetic that reflects the imposed distances and filtered visibility of war. Critics have noted the film’s stripped-back style (mostly buffer-laden FaceTime footage, interrupted calls, and pixelated images) that tastes of unmediated reality and sorrow, making the viewer feel even more intimately involved in the events being depicted on the screen.

Through it all, Fatma Hassona emerges as the film’s beating heart: always cheerful, even when surrounded by rubble, shortage, and grief. She shares her world with a quiet strength and surprising humor, discussing photography, music, and the simple joy of eating chips while bombs echo outside. Yet in April 2025, mere weeks after the film was selected for Cannes’ prestigious ACID sidebar, Hassona and several members of her family were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Her death casts a permanent shadow over the documentary, leaving behind a chilling statement about what it costs to look.

For all its opportunity, the documentary refuses easy distance or objective coldness. Instead, it lingers on the interruptions—the frozen frames, the dropped calls, the unedited glitches—so that viewers can feel even a shred of what it means to live under siege. It asks what form seeing takes when the camera, the connection, and even one’s body are all vulnerable. And though the film documents devastation, it refuses to devolve into either reductionism or the fetishization of victimhood; after all, Hassona is not a number. She is smiling, stubbornly alive, a human face among many, and the film dutifully preserves her voice.

For viewers drawn to documentaries that fuse intimacy and urgency, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk stands as a testament not just to loss, but to persistence. Perhaps its greatest superpower lies in juxtaposing life’s ordinary moments—calls about electricity, photos shared with friends abroad—with the extraordinary circumstances that turn them into daring acts.

“A moving monument to this young woman and countless others like her—lovers of life who refused to be quiet as they were swept into the dehumanizing machinery of war.” – Eli Friedberg, Slant Magazine

“Farsi’s film does not necessarily expose the morbid reality of Gaza as much as it reveals what it would be like to survive through it.” – Akash Despande, High On Films

“[The film] exudes character from every frame.” – Landon Defever, In Session Film

Schindler Space Architect: A Maverick Revisited

November 5, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Schindler Space Architect is an independently produced documentary examining the works and life of a pioneer of modern architecture, R.M. Schindler, narrated by Meryl Streep and Udo Kier, and featuring testimonials by renowned architects Frank Gehry, Steven Holl, Thom Mayne, and Ray Kappe, among many others.

Having already enjoyed an August run as part of our Culture Vulture series, Schindler Space Architect is now returning to the big screen as regular engagement beginning Friday, November 7th at the Laemmle Monica Film Center in order to qualify for the Oscars’ Best Documentary race. So come check out this fascinating tale of one of architecture’s most impactful (if forgotten) revolutionaries before it’s too late. Click here for tickets.

Message from the producer/director:

“Werner Herzog once said “Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life.” This has been my boat and it has taken twelve years to complete the mission.

M. Schindler’s life story is very close to my heart. He is the quintessential underdog: bohemian, rebel, working outside the mainstream, on a path of his own, unsung and quite often misunderstood. And yet, Schindler is the early modernist architect who fundamentally changed how people live, breaking the barriers between “inside” and “outside”, his architecture grew from the land and it was always in dialogue with Nature. Schindler experimented and invented over a period of thirty years, suffering the ups and downs of his creative genius, forging his own vision he left a well of inspiration. I was determined to put the spotlight on, to make a wrong right. As a first-time female filmmaker working outside the mainstream industry I had to overcome many challenges along the way. Wearing all kinds of hats: producer, researcher, writer, director, editor, to name a few, but I kept going, tirelessly fundraising, forging my own vision and attracting along the way collaborators that were inspired by Schindler and contributed their best. So, we end up with a film made with a lot of love and respect for a man who was a true original.

– Valentina Ganeva

“Viennese-born Rudolf Schindler transformed Los Angeles architecture with buildings shaped by space, light and interconnection with nature. In Schindler Space Architect, director Valentina Galena draws on rich archival material, cinematography and interviews to vividly tell the story of Schindler’s ideas, life, loves, and his complicated relationship with L.A.’s other founding Austrian modernist, Richard Neutra. Fascinating.” – Frances Anderton

“Turns basic assumptions about the birth of modern architecture upside down.” – Alan Hess, architect and historian

Painting in Motion: The Artful Visions of Laemmle’s “Culture Vulture” Series

November 5, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

This November and December, Laemmle’s Culture Vulture series celebrates the visual arts with four films that illuminate the power, passion, and mystery of painting. Continuing the series’ mission to bring world-class art and performance to the big screen, these films invite audiences to experience the creative process in all its beauty and turbulence. Click here to stay abreast of upcoming showtimes and other releases in the Culture Vulture series.

Caravaggio (November 15–17) begins the series with a luminous exploration of one of history’s most tempestuous geniuses. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was a man of extremes—revered and reviled, visionary and violent—and the film dives into those contradictions with cinematic flair. His revolutionary use of light and shadow transformed the sacred image into something startlingly human, while his personal demons gave his art an intensity still unmatched four centuries later. Through historical insight and breathtaking recreations, Caravaggio evokes the audacity of an artist who painted faith through flesh and divinity through imperfection.

The following weekend turns from the Renaissance to the present with Francisco Letelier: I Write Your Name (November 22–24), a stirring documentary about the Chilean-American muralist and activist. The son of slain diplomat Orlando Letelier, Francisco channels his personal tragedy into monumental works that reclaim memory and community. Filmed across the Americas, the documentary traces his journey as he uses art to confront loss, celebrate resilience, and honor the silenced. It’s a testament to painting as a public act: one capable of turning grief into beauty and protest into permanence.

Paint Me a Road Out of Here (November 29–December 1) turns its gaze to the transformative power of art as activism. Director Catherine Gund follows the hidden history of Faith Ringgold’s 1971 painting For the Women’s House, a sprawling portrayal of women in professions once denied to them. Originally installed at Rikers Island, the work was later painted over, hidden, and ultimately restored and rehung at the Brooklyn Museum. The film traces the painting’s fifty-year journey, interweaving Ringgold’s pioneering voice with fellow artist and prison reform advocate Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter’s firsthand experience of incarceration and creative release. At once heartbreaking and hopeful, this documentary shows how art built for the margins went on to expose the systemic erasure of women’s narratives—and asks what happens when those stories finally find a home.

The series concludes with Painting the Soul of the 20th Century: Pellizza Da Volpedo (December 13–15), offering an intimate portrait of the divisionist painter whose masterpiece The Fourth Estate became an emblem of social awakening and collective dignity. Moving through the landscapes and villages that shaped Pellizza’s original vision, the documentary mirrors the artist’s own pursuit of balance between art and ethics, solitude and society. With a visual language inspired by the meticulous brushwork and prismatic hues of its subject’s canvases, Painting the Soul of the 20th Century transforms biography into meditation, revealing an artist who painted not just people, but the spirit of an age.

Together, these four films offer an immersive journey through centuries of artistic vision, reminding us why painting remains one of humanity’s most enduring forms of expression. Laemmle’s Culture Vulture continues to bridge the worlds of stage, gallery, and screen, bringing audiences closer to the heart of creation itself.

The Art of the Everyday: Peter Hujar’s Day and the Beauty of a Vanishing Moment

November 4, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

Peter Hujar’s work has always carried an aura of stillness: photographs that seem to breathe, portraits that reveal as much about the viewer as they do the subject. In his newest film, Peter Hujar’s Day, filmmaker Ira Sachs channels that same quiet electricity. Adapted from Linda Rosenkrantz’s 2021 book of the same name, the film distills a single day in the photographer’s life into an intimate, searching character study, anchored by exquisite performances from both Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall.

Tune into Inside the Arthouse to hear Sachs discuss his latest project with co-hosts Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge ahead of its release at the Laemmle Royal on Friday, November 7th, followed by the Glendale on Nov. 14th. Director Ira Sachs and author Linda Rosenkrantz will participate in a Q&A following the 5:10 p.m. show on Sunday, Nov. 9 at the Royal.

Whishaw plays the legendary photographer not as a mythic figure, but as a fully lived-in presence: mercurial, tender, impatient, sharp, and unexpectedly funny. The film invites us into his rhythms—late mornings, cigarettes, half-finished thoughts, bursts of creative clarity—skillfully capturing the myriad subtle ways that an artist’s mind moves through the world. Sachs resists nostalgia or biography-by-checklist; instead, he constructs a film that feels observational, almost diaristic, as if we’re seated in the room beside Hujar, absorbing the day as he does.

Much of the film’s texture comes from the presence of Linda Rosenkrantz, played with luminous precision by Rebecca Hall. Rosenkrantz, a close friend and confidante of Hujar’s, recorded conversations with him in 1974 that later became the foundation of her book. Hall captures her subject’s mixture of curiosity, affection, and intellectual playfulness, qualities that draw Hujar out and give the film its emotional backbone. Through their dialogue, we glimpse two artists who understand each other deeply, even (perhaps especially) when they challenge each other’s ideas and modes of being.

Visually, the film mirrors Hujar’s own aesthetic. The camera lingers on faces, gestures, light falling across skin, and moments that feel simultaneously spontaneous and carefully composed. Music is used sparingly, giving the film a contemplative hush that heightens the emotional subtlety of Whishaw’s and Hall’s performances.

Rather than offering a sweeping biography, Peter Hujar’s Day stays tightly focused on a microcosm: one day, one set of conversations, one friendship that mattered enormously. In that narrow frame, Sachs finds something expansive that speaks to the fragility of creative lives, the intimacy of collaboration, and the fleeting, miraculous nature of artistic clarity.

“Imagine if My Dinner With Andre allowed for the characters to continue talking away from the table.” – Monica Castillo, RogerEbert.com

“[A] salute to the hidden transcendence of the everyday.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“Whishaw and Hall forego showiness for a quiet, shorthand-filled take on these old bohemian pals.” – David Fear, Rolling Stone

An Evening of Hitchcock & Herrmann

October 28, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle 2 Comments

North by Northwest screening with Oscar winner Paul Hirsch and author Steven C. Smith on November 5th at 7:00 PM at Laemmle’s Royal Theatre.

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present “An Evening of Hitchcock and Herrmann,” celebrating the collaboration of two of the most influential masters of cinema, director Alfred Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann, with a screening of one of their greatest triumphs, North by Northwest (1959). This special event coincides with the publication of Hitchcock & Herrmann: The Friendship and Film Scores That Changed Cinema by Steven C. Smith. Academy Award-winning film editor Paul Hirsch, a friend and close collaborator of Herrmann, who was an integral part of the last years of Herrmann’s life, joins us for an introductory discussion of the film on Wednesday, November 5th at 7:00 p.m. at the historic Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles.

North by Northwest, a spy thriller with elements of action, suspense, humor, and romance, is the perfect showcase for the talents of both Hitchcock and Herrmann. They first teamed up in 1955, and over the following decade turned out such seminal masterworks as Vertigo, North By Northwest, and Psycho, thus cementing Hitchcock’s reputation as the “master of suspense” while proving Herrmann as the ideal musical partner for Hitchcock’s visual mastery.

The film’s plot hangs on the premise of mistaken identity. When a Manhattan advertising executive (Cary Grant) is chased across the country by a sinister spy ring mistakenly targeting him as a government agent, as well as by the police, who think him a murderer, he must think fast (and move even faster!) in order to elude his pursuers. With Oscar nominations for original screenplay (Ernest Lehman), film editing (George Tomasini), and color art/set decoration, not to mention additional superlative work by cinematographer Robert Burks (Rear Window, Vertigo, The Music Man), the movie is perhaps the ultimate source of pure entertainment in the entire Hitchcock canon.

Herrmann sets the film’s tone by placing his opening title music over a memorable abstract credit sequence designed by Saul Bass, which Herrmann described as a “kaleidoscopic orchestral fandango designed to kick off the exciting route which follows.” Along the way, Grant encounters nefarious villains (James Mason, Martin Landau); a mysterious, alluring blonde (Eva Marie Saint); and “helpful” government agents headed by Leo G. Carroll, with the action deftly underscored by Herrmann’s propulsive music.

A critical and commercial smash, North by Northwest has received rapturous reviews ever since its 1959 premiere. Penelope Houston of Sight and Sound called it a “gleefully mischievous chase thriller” while citing Hitchcock’s “unmatched ingenuity.” The Hollywood Reporter touted the tongue-in-cheek element amid the cloak-and-dagger, with apt praise for Grant and the “ice-covered volcano” played by Eva Marie Saint. The New York Times enthused, “a suspenseful and delightful Cook’s tour of the most photogenic spots in these United States all done in brisk, genuinely witty and sophisticated style.”

Renowned for its distinctive set pieces of a menacing crop duster and a memorable climax on Mt. Rushmore, North by Northwest has consistently been ranked as one of the greatest films ever made. In 1995, it was inducted into the National Film Registry for “cultural, historical or aesthetic significance.”

Paul Hirsch won the Academy Award for film editing for Star Wars in 1977. During his distinguished career, spanning five decades and 40+ films, he has collaborated with Brian De Palma on eleven films including Sisters, Carrie, Blow Out and Mission: Impossible; John Hughes on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles; and received a second Oscar nomination for the biopic Ray in 2005. His collaboration with Herrmann in the 70s helped to resurrect the maestro’s A-list career. He recently published his memoir, A Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away.

Steven C. Smith is a four-time Emmy-nominated journalist and producer of more than 200 documentaries about music and cinema. In addition to Hitchcock and Herrmann, he is the author of the definitive biographies, A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann, and Music by Max Steiner: The Epic Life of Hollywood’s Most Influential Composer.

“An Evening of Hitchcock and Herrmann” with a screening of North By Northwest plays one night only, Wednesday, November 5 at 7:00 p.m. at the historic Royal Theater (continuously operating as a movie theater since 1924). Discussion and Q&A with Paul Hirsch and Steven C. Smith will take place before the screening.

A book sale and signing will accompany the event.

Nouvelle Vague: Linklater’s Love Letter to the French New Wave

October 28, 2025 by Lamb Laemmle Leave a Comment

With Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater turns his lens on one of cinema’s most electrifying moments: the birth of the French New Wave, inviting us to observe how a revolution in filmmaking quietly came to life. Shot in French, in black-and-white, and in a boxy 4:3 frame, the film brings back the heady Paris days of 1959, when Jean-Luc Godard and his Cahiers du Cinéma peers set out to reinvent cinema itself—and, against all odds, actually succeeded.

Come experience Nouvelle Vague in theaters, beginning Friday, October 31st at the Laemmle Royal, Claremont, Glendale, and NoHo 7.

Rather than dramatizing the legendary finished product À bout de souffle [Breathless], Linklater focuses on the process of its creation. We watch Godard pitch his radical proposal to a skeptical producer, assemble a cast of willing conspirators, and wrestle with the chaos of what develops when limited means meets infinite ambition. The film unfolds in cafés, cramped apartments, and dim cutting rooms, where ideas collide faster than film stock can capture them.

Linklater’s directorial approach is both affectionate and incisive. He recreates the textures of the period with meticulous care—grainy cinematography, reel-change marks, and jittery hand-held movement—but his real interest lies in unpacking the spirit of risk that defined the New Wave. Yet Nouvelle Vague doesn’t attempt to imitate Godard’s jump-cuts or anarchic cool; instead, it channels something closer to Truffaut’s warmth and curiosity; that tender belief in cinema as both laboratory and love affair.

Among the cast, Guillaume Marbeck’s Godard and Zoey Deutch’s Jean Seberg both ground and fortify the film’s emotional backbone. Marbeck faithfully captures Godard in all his restlessness and self-doubt, while Deutch lends Seberg an air of grace and melancholy, embodying the paradox of a star who feels both essential and expendable in someone else’s vision. Their uneasy rapport becomes the heart of the film, as a portrait of two artists suspended between devotion and doubt.

While Nouvelle Vague may lack the raw insurgency of its inspiration, it triumphs as a thoughtful and exuberant reflection on the act of creation itself. Beneath its wry humor and intelligence runs a current of affection for those who dare to see life as cinema, and cinema as life. In the end, it is a film that reminds us of why movies matter: not because they preserve the past, but because they keep it perpetually alive.

“It’s a savory pleasure to be able to step into this time machine and luxuriate in the company of people who thought that movies were the only thing that mattered.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“A cinephile’s film through and through.” – Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

“A slick Steadicam ride through a historic, tumultuous moment.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian