Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: "Phony Wars"

Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: "Phony Wars" (Film Annonce du Film qui n'existera Jamais: "Drôles de Guerres") is a 2023 French-Swiss avant-garde essay short film directed by Jean-Luc Godard and written by Fabrice Aragno, Nicole Brenez and Jean-Paul Battaggia. It was the first project released after Godard's death.

The short film had its world premiere at the "Cannes Classics" section of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, alongside a 4K restoration of Le Mépris (1963), as a tribute to the filmmaker.

Plot
"Rejecting the billions of alphabetic diktats to liberate the incessant metamorphoses and metaphors of a necessary and true language by re-turning to the locations of past film shoots, while keeping track of modern times."

Production
Reflecting on the film's development, Fabrice Aragno said, "For some of the film's chapters, Jean-Luc wanted to shoot in 35 mm black and white, 16 mm and Super 8 in colour. He wanted to get back to the old ways of making films, the ways he started out with, but with the distance of experience. It was January 2020, and as he made headway, I began the technical tests, but the Covid pandemic and series of lockdowns slammed the brakes down on our progress. Jean-Luc continued working on paper, developing successive versions of the script until he decided he wanted to make a trailer. It was a sort of snapshot of the film to come, a path that led back to its origins, and through it, the film already existed!"

Release
The short film had its world premiere at the "Cannes Classics" section of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, alongside a 4K restoration of Le Mépris (1963) and the French documentary Godard by Godard (2023), as a tribute to the filmmaker.