Richard Linklater’s new movie left the Cannes Film Festival audience – and potential movie distributors – Breathless.

Nouvelle Vague is Linklater’s homage to the French New Wave cinema movement, told through the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s classic film of the era, Breathless (À bout de souffle is the French title.) Linklater’s film has all the hallmarks of Godard’s original, with a French-language script, shot in black and white and featuring actors that very closely resemble the famous figures they are playing.

And while Linklater’s filmmaking process differs from the rule-breaking and convention-defying work of Godard, the resulting film impressed critics and audience members, who gave the film an eleven-minute standing ovation.

And now movie distribution arms are in a fierce competition for the right to bring the film to a domestic audience. Deadline reported that a deal was expected “to get done in the next 48 hours and it should be at the higher end for a U.S. acquisition of a French-language movie. In the right hands, there’s talk the film could figure in the awards race.”

Nouvelle Vague was scripted by the team of Vince Palmo, Michèle Halberstadt, Laetitia Masson and Holly Gent. French actor Guillaume Marbeck portrays Godard, Zoey Deutch plays Jean Seberg and newcomer Aubry Dullin portrays Jean Paul Belmondo.

In addition to Godard, characters in the movie include Euro-cinema legends Jean Cocteau, Robert Bresson, Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Pierre Melville, Eric Rohmer, Agnes Varda, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette.

Whoever picks up the US Distribution rights is expected to have the film in theaters later this year, in time for the 2026 awards season.