Film director Jean-Luc Godard was born on December 3, 1930, in Paris, France. Born in France, he spent his childhood in his mother's hometown of Switzerland. After his parents divorced in 1948, he returned to Paris and enrolled at the Sorbonne the following year. Around this time, Godard joined the Latin Quarter cinema club and contributed film criticism to its journal, La Gazette du Cinéma, alongside fellow members Jacques Rivette and others. As an extension of their critical activities, they eventually branched out into filmmaking, releasing a series of groundbreaking works that rejected classical cinema. This movement, known as the "Nouvelle Vague," had a profound influence on the French film industry. In 1959, Godard released his first feature film, Breathless. Starting with location shooting primarily on the streets interwoven with improvisational direction, and frequently employing film editing that ignored the continuity of scenes, Godard's experimental direction was unthinkable within the conventional film world. His style had a profound impact on audiences and industry insiders alike, catapulting him to worldwide recognition as a pioneer of the New Wave.
Godard went on to win the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1961 for A Woman is a Woman and the Golden Bear in 1965 for Alphaville. However, in 1967 he declared his "break with commercial film" and formed the filmmaking collective Dziga Vertov. Aiming to revolutionize the film industry through Marxism-Leninism, he began to experiment with ever more experimental visual expressions. His activities gradually took on a political tone, such as when, in 1968, he and François Truffaut forced the cancellation of the Cannes Film Festival. However, he returned to commercial film with The Man Who Loved Me, released in 1980, and won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1983 for Carmen. He continued to release masterpieces, including Keep Your Right and The Legend of Godard. In 2014, his first 3D feature film, Goodbye Language, won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. In recognition of these achievements, he was awarded the Praemium Imperiale in 2002. Meanwhile, in his personal life, he married actress Anna Karina in 1961, but they divorced in 1965. He remarried actress Anne Wiazemsky in 1967.
