French New Wave

The French New Wave was a film movement from the 1950s and 60s and one of the most influential in cinema history. Also known as “Nouvelle Vague," it gave birth to a new kind of cinema that was highly self-aware and revolutionary to mainstream filmmaking.

A group of French critics, who wrote for the journal, Cahiers du Cinema, believed films had lost their ability to capture true human emotion and "lacked sincerity." They felt the films were out of step with how people actually live

There were quite a few notable French film directors who were part of the movement, including Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Louis Malle, Alain Resnais, Agnes Varda, and Jacques Demy