Part of the Allaince Française Belmondo Film Festival, Breathless was the first feature directed by Jean-Luc Godard and one of the films introducing the French New Wave in the late 1950s. Godard had made several short films before Breathless, but this feature established the international reputation of the director who is regarded as one of the most important filmmakers of the 1960s.

The film stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as a wandering criminal named Michel, and Jean Seberg as his American girlfriend Patricia. By Belmondo’s own account, the film made him famous overnight.