Film

Senegalese master Djibril Diop Mambéty achieved international renown with his firecracker debut feature, a couple-on-the-run caper in which a rebellious cowhand-biker and his university student lover turn to petty crime in order to escape Dakar for a new life in Paris. Combining New Wave-inspired experimentalism with a vérité eye for everyday life, Mambéty mines the tensions between Africa and Europe, urban and rural, tradition and modernity.

Godard’s landmark debut came to define New Wave cool, a whiz-bang blend of American pulp cinema conventions and freewheeling stylistic experimentation (off-the-cuff location shooting, handheld camerawork, now-iconic jump cuts). Jean-Paul Belmondo channels Bogart as a two-bit tough guy running from the law while romancing Jean Seberg’s trés chic American in Paris.