Two in the Wave DVD, 2010

Two in the Wave is a story of a friendship and estrangement, charting the rise and fall of the friendship between Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, the two leading filmmakers of the French New Wave in the 1950s and '60s. Drawing heavily on archive footage, film clips and interviews, the film shows how the political and artistic differences between the two men eventually caused them to disagree so vehemently in the aftermath of the May 1968 strikes in France that they remained enemies until Truffaut's death in 1984.

Jean-Luc Godard was born in 1930; François Truffaut two years later. Love of movies brings them together. They write in the same magazines, Cahiers du Cinema and Arts. When the younger of the two becomes a filmmaker with The 400 Blows, which triumphs in Cannes in 1959, he helps his older friend shift to directing, offering him a screenplay which already has a title, A bout de souffle, or Breathless. Through the 1960s the two loyally support each other. History and politics separate them in 1968 and afterwards - when Godard plunges into radical politics but Truffaut continues his career as before. Between the two of them, the actor Jean-Pierre Léaud is torn like a child caught between two separated and warring parents. Their friendship and their break-up embody the story of French cinema. Exploring the letters, personal archives and films of the two New Wave directors, Two in the Wave takes us back to a prodigious decade that transformed the world of cinema.