Jean-Luc Godard presented À bout de souffle (Breathless) at the 10th Berlin International Film Festival, a landmark early festival showcase for the French New Wave; Godard received the Silver Bear for Best Director for the film.
At the 1961 Berlinale, Godard’s Une femme est une femme received the Silver Bear Extraordinary Jury Prize, and Anna Karina won the Silver Bear for Best Actress—reinforcing the festival’s role as a high-profile platform for New Wave talent.
The Berlinale’s Retrospective programming in 1963 included a focus on Yasujiro Ozu, reflecting how the festival contextualized modern “new wave” film cultures by pairing contemporary innovation with influential auteurs from world cinema.
Godard’s Alphaville won the Golden Bear at the 15th Berlin International Film Festival, marking one of the Berlinale’s most visible endorsements of French New Wave cinema during the movement’s peak.
Agnès Varda’s Le Bonheur received major recognition at the 1965 Berlinale (including the Jury Grand Prix), underscoring the festival’s prominence for French New Wave–associated work beyond Godard and Truffaut.
In 1966, the Berlinale’s Retrospective included Cinema Novo, indicating a broadened “new wave” curatorial lens that placed parallel modern movements (beyond France) within the festival’s institutional canon-building.
At the 1966 Berlinale, Jean-Pierre Léaud won a Silver Bear for acting in Godard’s Masculin, Féminin, a key moment linking the festival’s awards culture to emblematic New Wave performers.
In 1967, the Golden Bear went to Jerzy Skolimowski’s Le départ (starring Jean-Pierre Léaud), while Éric Rohmer’s La collectionneuse received a Silver Bear Jury Prize—both reinforcing the Berlinale’s engagement with European “new wave” aesthetics and talent networks.
The 1968 Berlinale yearbook singled out Godard’s Week-End as the most striking Competition film, situating New Wave–linked formal radicalism within the festival’s broader political and cultural debates of 1968.
The 1969 Berlinale yearbook notes Godard’s Le Gai Savoir among films associated with themes like social change and generational conflict, reflecting how the festival framed New Wave-era works within a larger current of late-1960s cinematic modernism.
In 1970, the Berlinale’s Retrospective included a program of Golden Bear winners and other Berlinale films, institutionalizing the festival’s own history and helping canonize earlier modern works that overlapped with the New Wave era.
The 1972 Retrospective included a focus on Douglas Fairbanks, illustrating the festival’s 1960s–early-1970s approach to retrospectives: pairing contemporary innovation (including new waves) with curated silent-era and classical-Hollywood lineages.
The 1973 Retrospective included Wilhelm/William Dieterle, continuing the festival’s practice of historical reappraisal during the period when “new wave” movements were being absorbed into institutions and film history narratives.
In 1974, the Berlinale Retrospective featured Jacques Feyder and Norman McLaren, highlighting the festival’s role in broadening retrospective canons to include both narrative auteurs and innovative animation—adjacent to wider “new wave” ideas of formal experimentation.
The 1975 Retrospective included Greta Garbo, exemplifying how the Berlinale institutionalized film heritage through star-centered retrospectives while the legacy of 1960s new waves was being consolidated into festival culture and archival practice.
Berlin International Film Festival's New Wave premieres and retrospectives, 1960–1975
