French New Wave and beyond: 21 films from sixties France

Weekly collection in the app for the week of July 10, 2026.

In 1960s Paris, Godard, Truffaut and Varda ripped the camera off the dolly and ran into the street, and world cinema never recovered. Around the New Wave proper stood giants who were never quite in it: Bresson's asceticism, Tati's choreographed modernity, Demy's candy-colored heartbreak.

This collection of 21 films ran as the weekly theme in the I Like Movies Discover tab for the week of July 10, 2026, around Bastille Day, featuring Breathless. Two films each from Godard, Truffaut, Varda, Resnais, Demy, Bresson and Chabrol map the decade's range.

The collection

1. Breathless (1960) Godard Featured A small-time car thief who models himself on Bogart hides out with an American student in Paris after shooting a policeman; the jump-cut manifesto that announced the New Wave. Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger
2. Pierrot le Fou (1965) Godard A bored husband runs off with the babysitter, who happens to be tangled with gunrunners, into a primary-colored crime spree south; Godard at his most romantic and unhinged. Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina, Graziella Galvani
3. Jules and Jim (1962) Truffaut Two best friends love the same mercurial woman across twenty years and a world war; the New Wave's most famous love triangle, joyous until it is not. Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, Henri Serre
4. Shoot the Piano Player (1960) Truffaut A once-famous concert pianist hides as a honky-tonk player in a Paris bar until his brothers drag him back into gangster trouble; noir, comedy and heartbreak shuffled together. Cast: Charles Aznavour, Marie Dubois, Nicole Berger
5. Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) Varda A pampered pop singer waits two hours for biopsy results, drifting through Paris as her fear strips away her vanity; told in near real time. Cast: Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dominique Davray
6. Le Bonheur (1965) Varda A carpenter loves his wife, loves his children, and then also loves a postmistress, and sees no problem; sunlit, scored to Mozart, and one of the most quietly merciless films ever made. Cast: Jean-Claude Drouot, Claire Drouot, Olivier Drouot
7. Last Year at Marienbad (1961) Resnais In a vast baroque hotel, a man insists to a woman that they met and loved last year; she denies it; the film takes both sides. A gorgeous puzzle with no bottom. Cast: Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoëff
8. Hiroshima mon amour (1959) Resnais A French actress and a Japanese architect spend a night in Hiroshima trading memories of war, hers of a shaved head in Nevers, his of the bomb; Resnais fused love story and documentary. Cast: Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada, Stella Dassas
9. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) Demy A garage mechanic and a shop girl are separated by the Algerian war; every single line is sung, the colors are candy, and the ending is one of cinema's great heartbreaks. Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon
10. The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) Demy Twin sisters dream of Paris while a fair sets up in their pastel port town; one weekend of musical numbers and near-missed connections, Demy's sunniest film. Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Dorléac, Jacques Perrin
11. Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) Bresson The life of a donkey, passed from owner to owner, kind and cruel, in parallel with the girl who first loved him; Bresson's austere style makes it shattering. Cast: Anne Wiazemsky, Walter Green, François Lafarge
12. Belle de Jour (1967) Buñuel A frigid, respectable doctor's wife secretly spends her afternoons working in a Paris brothel; Buñuel folds fantasy and reality together until neither label holds. Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli
13. My Night at Maud's (1969) Rohmer A cautious Catholic engineer, resolved to marry a blonde stranger he has seen at mass, is snowed in overnight with the brilliant, freethinking Maud; nothing but talk, completely gripping. Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Françoise Fabian, Marie-Christine Barrault
14. Playtime (1967) Tati Tati's Monsieur Hulot and a group of American tourists wander a glass-and-steel Paris built full-scale for the film; sight gags staged across every corner of the frame. It bankrupted him. Cast: Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek, Rita Maiden
15. Mouchette (1967) Bresson A poor rural teenager, bullied at school and burdened at home, moves through a short chain of small cruelties; Bresson at his most stern, with an ending that stops the breath. Cast: Nadine Nortier, Jean-Claude Guilbert, Marie Cardinal
16. Z (1969) Costa-Gavras After a leftist politician is assassinated at a rally, a stubborn magistrate follows the evidence into the military government itself; a political thriller that plays like a race. Cast: Yves Montand, Irene Papas, Jean-Louis Trintignant
17. Les Bonnes Femmes (1960) Chabrol Four Paris shopgirls dream past their dead-end days toward romance; Chabrol watches the city's predators circle with cold clarity. Cast: Bernadette Lafont, Clotilde Joano, Stéphane Audran
18. Les Biches (1968) Chabrol A wealthy woman picks up a young street artist, takes her to St. Tropez, and the games of desire and possession slowly tighten; the film that opened Chabrol's great period. Cast: Stéphane Audran, Jacqueline Sassard, Jean-Louis Trintignant
19. Le Feu Follet (1963) Malle A recovering alcoholic checks out of his clinic and spends two days visiting old friends in Paris, deciding whether any of it is reason enough to stay alive; lucid and devastating. Cast: Maurice Ronet, Léna Skerla, Yvonne Clech
20. The Suitor (1962) Étaix Ordered by his parents to find a wife, a sheltered young man studies romance like an engineering problem; near-silent physical comedy from Tati's true heir. Cast: France Arnel, Laurence Lignières, Claude Massot
21. A Man and a Woman (1966) Lelouch A widowed script girl and a widowed race-car driver meet at their children's boarding school and circle toward love; the theme tune conquered the world, the Palme d'Or followed. Cast: Anouk Aimée, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Pierre Barouh

Keep your place

Twenty-one films is a season of evenings: keep them on your I Like Movies watchlist, tick them off as you go, and rate them so the app learns which side of the Wave you prefer. New themed collections arrive in the Discover tab every Friday.

Questions people ask

What was the French New Wave?

A late-1950s movement of critics turned directors: jump cuts, location shooting, small crews, cinema about cinema. Breathless (1960) is its manifesto, and Cléo from 5 to 7 shows the Left Bank branch that history undersold.

Is Belle de Jour a New Wave film?

No. Buñuel was a Spanish surrealist working in France, and Bresson, Tati and Costa-Gavras stood apart from the movement too. The collection covers sixties French cinema broadly, with the Wave at its center.

The week before: Time travel movies: 21 essential films. The week after: Nature as protagonist: 21 films about the wild. See every weekly theme, or browse every guide, watch order and comparison.