The film “Nouvelle Vague,” directed by Linklater, delves into the influential French New Wave era, centering specifically on the creation of Jean-Luc Godard’s iconic “Breathless.” Guillaume Marbeck stars as Godard, a former film critic for Cahiers du Cinema who rose to prominence as a revered director in France. Zoey Deutch takes on the role of American actress Jean Seberg, Godard’s leading lady in the film. Reflecting real-life inspirations, “Breathless” was based on a story about a man who stole a car to visit his ailing mother, a tale introduced to Godard by François Truffaut, the director behind “The 400 Blows,” portrayed by Adrien Rouyard in Linklater’s film.

“Breathless” stands as a cornerstone of the Nouvelle Vague movement, which emphasized innovative filmmaking over conventional methods. Fittingly, Linklater’s film about this revolutionary period has been met with critical acclaim. Zoey Deutch’s portrayal has particularly captured attention, with critics applauding her standout performance.

The world premiere of Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague” at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival earned it a Palme D’Or nomination, highlighting the successful reunion of Linklater and Deutch, who previously collaborated on “Everybody Wants Some!!!” in 2016. The film has been praised for its impressive ensemble, currently holding a strong 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Pete Hammond of Deadline lauded the film’s casting as “exquisite,” singling out Guillaume Marbeck for his portrayal of Godard. He also extolled Deutch, writing, “Deutch is especially impressive as Seberg. There wasn’t a moment I thought I was watching anyone else but Seberg.”

When Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague” premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, it received a nomination for the Palme D’Or — and it also made it quite clear that Linklater’s second collaboration with Zoey Deutch after “Everybody Wants Some!!!” in 2016 is another great union between the actress and director. In general, the casting for the film, which is sitting pretty at 90% on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing, has earned a lot of praise. Pete Hammond, writing for Deadline, called the film’s overall casting “exquisite” and, after praising Guillaume Marbeck for his performance as Jean-Luc Godard, turned his attention to Deutch. “Deutch is especially impressive as Seberg. There wasn’t a moment I thought I was watching anyone else but Seberg,” he wrote.

Elsewhere, IndieWire‘s Ryan Lattanzio “Deutch wryly plays Seberg as a kind of mischievous backstage drama queen, complaining about the amateur production and its lack of sync sound to her disaffected husband, the filmmaker François Moreuil (Paolo Luka-Noé) — her first of a few toxic husbands.” Legendary critic Peter Travers, on his own publication The Travers Take, gushed about Deutch’s performance. “And Zoey Deutch, wow. A lot of performances are called revelatory, but what the former Disney star does here truly is,” Travers wrote, even noting that Deutch’s accent work — speaking French with a “flat American accent” like Seberg did — was “terrific.”

As it happens, Deutch already picked up an accolade at the 2025 Savannah Film Festival on November 1, 2025 for its Breakthrough Performance Award, and it’s quite possible that she could be a contender in either the lead or supporting categories at the 2026 Academy Awards (which are set to take place that March). So where have you seen Deutch before?

Zoey Deutch — who, yes, is technically a “nepo baby,” as her mother is 1980s film star Lea Thompson — has been working pretty steadily since the early 2010s, appearing in then-popular shows like “The Suite Life on Deck” (the aforementioned Disney project) and procedurals like “NCIS,” but it was actually thanks to Richard Linklater that she became a more prominent performer thanks to the ensemble comedy “Everybody Wants Some!!!” Deutch appeared in “The Disaster Artist” in 2017, one year after working with Linklater, and then in 2018 she got her biggest break yet by reuniting with her “Everybody Wants Some!!!” co-star Glen Powell for the (extremely good) Netflix original romantic comedy “Set It Up.”

“Set It Up” really put Deutch on the map and proved that she could easily lead a romantic comedy, and while she’s worked on other rom-coms like Amazon Prime Video’s 2022 film “Something from Tiffany’s,” but Deutch has also flexed her comedic and dramatic chops elsewhere. Deutch is quite funny in 2019’s “Zombieland: Double Tap” and also excellent in serious dramas like the 2024 standout “Juror No. 2,” where she plays the wife of the titular juror, journalist Justin Kemp (an astounding Nicholas Hoult). The sky seems to be the limit for Deutch, and thanks to her continued collaboration with Linklater, her star might rise even more pretty soon.

“Nouvelle Vague” is streaming on Netflix now.