Jean-Bernard Menoud

Godard stars as an eccentric filmmaker in this fragmentary love poem from his 1980s period. Loosely based on Bizet’s opera, First Name: Carmen reinvents cinema into elliptical broken rhythms and passages of poetry to renew one of the oldest of tales: that of two lovers on the run.

Godard’s ‘60s films are legend, but his career went far beyond the French New Wave. Roundly condemned by the Vatican for its risky retelling of the Virgin Mary’s story, this is a highlight of his underrated ‘80s period, as cinema’s great experimenter refused to soften his provocative edge.