Les Quatre Cents Coups | The 400 Blows: dir François Truffaut (1959)

Truffaut’s largely autobiographical coming-of-age drama is the classic French New Wave film and utterly unmissable. In the first of many appearances with the director, Jean-Pierre Léaud is a misunderstood 13-year-old living in a small, uncomfortable Parisian apartment with his mother, a sullen woman who doesn’t love him, and the man who gave him his name but isn’t his father. As he grows older, Antoine becomes increasingly unable to tolerate his situation and dreams of a better future. Petty theft and skipping school eventually leads him to court and then to a centre for troubled youths near the sea. He escapes and runs to the ocean, which he has always wanted to see; he turns and looks at the camera in one of cinema’s finest final frames …

In French with English subtitles. This film screens as part of the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s Cannes Nights series, inviting the audience to “experience the glamour of the Cannes Film Festival” in collaboration with the Institut Français. Screenings take place in the museum’s auditorium.