'I love living inside a project for a long time,' says Richard Linklater

Terry Gross

November 03, 2025 / 11:17 am

Filmmaker Richard Linklater doesn't speak French, but that didn't stop him from directing a movie that's almost entirely in French. Nouvelle Vague focuses on the beginning of the New Wave of cinema, specifically Jean-Luc Godard and his landmark 1960 movie Breathless.

"I know that sounds insane," Linklater says, "but me not having the language wasn't even in my top 10 concerns about if I could pull off the movie."

Linklater says he'd speak English on the set and rehearse in English, which meant that the cast and crew understood about "80 plus percent of what I [was] saying." The result, he says, is a film that emphasizes the visual.

Godard's Breathless (A Bout de S

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