Artists must always rebel, cult US director Richard Linklater said as he arrived at the Rome Film Festival to received its lifetime achievement award for films ranging from Dazed and Confused to School of Rock, Boyhood and the 'Before' trilogy.
"There's always a revolution in cinema somewhere in the world, there's always someone doing something different, and art and artists must rebel against the status quo," said the 65-year-old Houston born director, whose other titles include Fast Food Nation, Slacker, Bernie, Suburbia and Everybody Wants Some!!.
"This is a moment in history when this need is particularly felt.
In the modern world, there are so many pressures to conform and commercial pressures that there's always plenty to rebel against." Linklater, who is presenting in Rome his latest Nouvelle Vague, a journey through the making of the directorial debut of one of the icons of the New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard, Breathless.
The film, which stars Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, Aubry Dullin, Adrien Rouyard, Antoine Besson, and Jodie Ruth, premiered at Cannes and will be released in theaters with Lucky Red and Bim in early 2026.
Linklater offers a black-and-white behind-the-scenes look at life and cinema, recounting how that masterpiece was born, amidst doubts, difficulties, clear-cut choices, and brilliance.
It's a journey into the upheaval in the seventh art that the French new wave was bringing to the fore in those years.
"There was a great ferment in cinema in many parts of the world in those years, including the United States, but Paris was certainly its hub.
There was such a concentration of directors and films... they also had Cahiers du Cinema as a base.
"It seemed like the best atmosphere to express their love for cinema, and in that sense, they were excellent self-marketers.
"Godard, on the other hand, is so different: there's a revolution going on in the air, but above all in this man. You can see it in the way he creates his own cinematic language." "On the auteurs of my generation and those after mine, he has always had such a vast influence that he has become part of the language of independent cinema and more personal cinema. "For me, it's always about freedom of expression. Feeling that you can make a film about anything, any subject, even the most intimate, without limits." Linklater, born in 1960, has explored genres and cinematic forms, from the story of friendship and love in the Before trilogy with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight) to the dystopian A Scanner Darkly, without ever being afraid to experiment with multiple planes of reality, as in Waking Life or time, as in Boyhood, created by shooting the story over the course of 12 years.
A form of storytelling that he is also pursuing in making the adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical Merrily We Roll Along, which he began shooting in 2019.
"I don't think things have changed much in the last 65 years for independent cinema. There's no money, the same battles are fought. What has changed a lot is distribution.
"Given the advances in technology, perhaps this is the best time for a debut director, but it's also the greatest challenge to get your film seen, to get what you create across to the public." In addition to Nouvelle Vague, Linklater also has Blue Moon coming out (which debuted at the Berlinale), about the composer and lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke).
"There I tell the final part of an artist's life, here the beginning, which is generally more fun, more optimistic," he comments, smiling.
When it comes to choosing which projects to make, "I never think in terms of a career, a path. Usually there's a story that obsesses me, and so I simply try to make that film, and it often takes a long time to get the financing and support. I've always struggled through these 35 years to finally make the next film.
There's no master plan."
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