François Truffaut's autobiographical debut follows Antoine Doinel, a neglected Parisian boy who drifts into petty delinquency as indifferent parents and rigid teachers fail him at every turn, culminating in his arrest and confinement to a juvenile facility. Shot with a loose, observational camera that was radical for its time, the film became a founding text of the French New Wave, prizing emotional truth and youthful restlessness over conventional plotting. Jean-Pierre Léaud's performance, and the character of Doinel, would follow Truffaut across four more films over the next two decades. The freeze-frame ending, Antoine staring directly into the camera at the sea, remains one of cinema's most quoted images.