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: France

Richard Linklater’s Cannes Competition title 'Nouvelle Vague' had its world premiere the Palais this evening and was welcomed with a 11-minute ovation.

Linklater is best known for his walk-and-talk Before trilogy, titles like Dazed and Confused and Boyhood, and for his naturalistic filmmaking. Linklater, who was previously at the fest with 2006 sci-fi thriller A Scanner Darkly, said of what Breathless meant to him, as a filmmaker, that “It represented freedom and the notion of the personal film.”