François Truffaut

François Roland Truffaut was a French filmmaker, actor, and critic, considered one of the founders of the Nouvelle Vague. With a career spanning over 25 years, he is an icon of the French film industry. As a young man, he came under the tutelage of film critic André Bazin, who hired him to write for his Cahiers du Cinéma. It was there that he became an exponent of the auteur theory, which held that the director is the true author of the film. The 400 Blows, starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as Truffaut's alter ego Antoine Doinel, was a defining film of the Nouvelle Vague.