The man who holds the legacy of Jean-Luc Godard

Fabrice Aragno, Jean-Luc Godard's close collaborator, discusses the ideas in Godard's final films and his experience making films after the director's death. More than a year before Jean-Luc Godard died by assisted suicide in September 2022, Yves Saint-Laurent commissioned a short film by the great director, eager to boost the brand’s credentials by securing a new work by the most famous name of the French New Wave. What Godard produced – a cryptic short film based on a longtime idea he had in his mind entitled Drôles de guerres / Phony Wars – was submitted to the luxury fashion house in spring 2021 but wouldn’t be released for another two years. “I hope they weren’t sitting on it because they expected Godard to die and therefore profit from it, marketing-wise,” Fabrice Aragno, Godard’s principal collaborator for the past 20 years, told SWI swissinfo in a video call in anticipation of the latest screening, at the Vienna Film Festival (Viennale). Whatever their motivation, Godard ...