Richard Linklater's ode to the French New Wave enchants Cannes

CANNES, France (AP) — When Richard Linklater first started thinking about making a film about the French New Wave, he figured he'd show it all everywhere except one place.

“I thought: They'll hate that an American director did this,” Linklater said Sunday. “We’ll show this film all over the world, but never in France.”

But Linklater nevertheless unveiled “Nouvelle Vague” on Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival, bringing film about the making of Jean-Luc Godard's “Breathless” to the very heart of the French film industry. It was, Linklater granted, an audacious thing to do.

And “Nouvelle Vague” went down as one of the biggest successes of the festival. At a Cannes that's been largely characterized by darker, more portentous dramas, “Nouvelle Vague” was cheered as an enchanting ode to moviemaking.

“Nouvelle Vague” is an uncanny kind of recreation. In black-and-white and in the style of the French New Wave, it chronicles the making of one of the most celebrated French films of all time. With sunglasses that never come off his face, Guillaume Marbeck plays 29-year-old Godard as he's making his first feature, trying to launch himself as a film director and upend filmmaking convention.

Linklater's movie, which is for sale at Cannes and competing for the Palme d'Or, is in French. It not only goes day-by-day through the making of “Breathless," it endeavors to capture the entire movement of one of the most fabled eras of moviemaking. Truffaut, Varda, Chabrol, Melville, Rohmer, Rossellini and Rivette are just some of the famous filmmakers who drift in and out of the movie.

Linklater told reporters Sunday that he wanted audiences to feel “like they were hanging out with Nouvelle Vague in 1959.”

“It was an old idea of some colleagues of mine,” said Linklater. "Thirteen years ago we started talking about it. We're just cinephiles Austin, Texas, who love this era and it's meant so much to me in my filmmaking. It represented freedom and the notion of the personal film. I've made a lot of films and I've always felt if you do it long enough, maybe you should make one film about making films.”

The stars of “Breathless” — Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg — are played by Aubry Dullin and Zoey Deutch, respectively, in “Nouvelle Vague.” With precision, Linklater captures them making some of the most famous shots from “Breathless" with a visual style and camera movements typical of that time.

“We couldn’t work quite as fast. We had sound and things,” said Linklater, chuckling. (Godard dubbed sound after shooting.)

“It was a crazy idea and I haven’t really ever seen a film exactly like this. I said: We’re making a film from 1959 but it’s not a Godard film,” said Linklater. “You can’t imitate Godard. You fail. But we could imitate the style of the time.”

In “Nouvelle Vague," Godard is surrounded by doubts — Seberg is notably unsure of the project — but he stubbornly sticks to his instance on spontaneity. There's no real script, some shooting days just last a few hours and lines are improvised on the spot. In one fittingly moment where Godard tells his actors just to quote Humphry Bogart movie lines, he explains: “Not plagiarism. Homage.”

Linklater's own homage in “Nouvelle Vague" brought him back to his early days as a filmmaker. His first films — “Slacker,” “Dazed and Confused," “Before Sunrise” — have much of the independent spirit of the New Wave, he said.

“Making this film all these later, I felt like I erased my own history,” said Linklater. “I was going back to being in my late 20s making my first film. I told a friend last night: I felt like was 28 years old making this film.”

Daniella Pick, left, and Quentin Tarantino pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Nouvelle Vague' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Michele Halberstadt, from left, Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, director Richard Linklater, Aubry Dullin and producer Laurent Petin pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Nouvelle Vague' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Photo by Lewis Joly/Invision/AP)

Zoey Deutch, left, and Guillaume Marbeck pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Nouvelle Vague' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Guillaume Marbeck, from left, Aubry Dullin, director Richard Linklater, Zoey Deutch and Michele Halberstadt pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Nouvelle Vague' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Guillaume Marbeck, from left, director Richard Linklater, Zoey Deutch and Aubry Dullin pose for photographers at the photo call for the film 'Nouvelle Vague' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Sunday, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

SAN FRANCISCO & JACKSONVILLE, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 12, 2026--

Abridge, the leading enterprise-grade AI for clinical conversations, is collaborating with Availity, the nation’s largest real-time health information network, to launch a first-of-its kind prior authorization experience. The engagement uses cutting-edge technology grounded in the clinician-patient conversation to facilitate a more efficient process between clinicians and health plans in medical necessity review.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260112960386/en/

Rather than creating parallel AI systems across healthcare stakeholders, Abridge and Availity are working together to ensure shared clinical context at the point of conversation powers administrative processes, such as prior authorization review and submission, improving outcomes for patients and the teams delivering care.

This collaboration unites two trusted and scaled organizations: combining Abridge’s enterprise-grade AI platform, serving over 200 health systems and projected to support over 80 million patient-clinician conversations in 2026, with Availity’s next-generation, FHIR-native Intelligent Utilization Management solution, which helps payers and providers digitize and operationalize coverage requirements within administrative workflows.

Availity’s FHIR-native APIs enable fast, scalable, and secure connectivity of payer information across the entire healthcare ecosystem. With Abridge’s Contextual Reasoning Engine technology, clinicians can gain visibility into relevant clinical information during the conversation to support documentation aligned with prior authorization requirements.

“At Availity, we’ve invested in building AI-powered, FHIR-native APIs designed to bring clinical policy logic directly into provider workflows,” said Russ Thomas, CEO of Availity. “By embedding our technology at the point of conversation, we’re enabling faster, more transparent utilization management decisions rooted in clinical context. We’re excited to collaborate with Abridge and to demonstrate what’s possible when payer intelligence meets real-time provider workflows.”

The development of real-time prior authorization is just a component of a broader revenue cycle collaboration that is focused on applying real-time conversational intelligence across the patient, provider, and payer experiences. The companies intend to support integration by collaborating on workflow alignment between their respective platforms in the following areas:

“Abridge and Availity are each bringing national scale, deep trust, and a track record of solving important challenges across the care and claims experience to this partnership,” said Dr. Shiv Rao, CEO and Co-Founder of Abridge. “We’re building real-time bridges between patients, providers, and payers, unlocking shared understanding, focused at the point of conversation.”

About Availity

Availity empowers payers and providers to deliver transformative patient experiences by enabling the seamless exchange of clinical, administrative, and financial information. As the nation's largest real-time health information network, Availity develops intelligent, automated, and interoperable solutions that foster collaboration and shared value across the healthcare ecosystem. With connections to over 95% of payers, more than 3 million providers, and over 2,000 trading partners, Availity provides mission-critical connectivity to drive the future of healthcare innovation. For more information, including an online demonstration, please visit www.availity.com or call 1.800.AVAILITY (282.4548). Follow us on LinkedIn.

About Abridge

Abridge was founded in 2018 to power deeper understanding in healthcare. Abridge is now trusted by more than 200 of the largest and most complex health systems in the U.S. The enterprise-grade AI platform transforms medical conversations into clinically useful and billable documentation at the point of care, reducing administrative burden and clinician burnout while improving patient experience. With deep EHR integration, support for 28+ languages, and 50+ specialties, Abridge is used across a wide range of care settings, including outpatient, emergency department, and inpatient.

Abridge’s enterprise-grade AI platform is purpose-built for healthcare. Supported by Linked Evidence, Abridge is the only solution that maps AI-generated summaries to source data, helping clinicians quickly trust and verify the output. As a pioneer in generative AI for healthcare, Abridge is setting the industry standard for the responsible deployment of AI across health systems.

Abridge was awarded Best in KLAS 2025 for Ambient AI in addition to other accolades, including Forbes 2025 AI 50 List, TIME Best Inventions of 2024, and Fortune’s 2024 AI 50 Innovators.

Abridge and Availity Collaborate to Redefine Payer-Provider Synergy at the Point of Conversation

Abridge and Availity Collaborate to Redefine Payer-Provider Synergy at the Point of Conversation