Via a series of conversations with relatives and friends and many aptly-chosen film fragments, a complete picture is presented of the great French Nouvelle Vague director François Truffaut. The makers ‘read’ Truffaut’s features in a psychological and autobiographical manner; facts from the maker’s life are coupled with the fiction in the films. In this way, new facts that the film manages to reveal (such as Truffaut’s quest for his biological father with the aid of a private detective) are put in a framework that the film-maker had already created.The makers aimed to make their film a kind of visual essay about the auteur Truffaut. Their premise was that the films were indeed well known, but that too little insight had been gained into the personality of their maker.Co-director Serge Toubiana is giving the Serge Daney Lecture at the festival (see elsewhere in the catalogue).
