Jean-Luc Godard: Unmade and Abandoned

At the ICA in London, Jean-Luc Godard: Unmade and Abandoned (25 November 2025 – 21 June 2026) examines projects Godard never realised. The programme brings to view his shelved film ideas, unmade television scripts and fragments that never grew into finished works.

“By setting a selection of Godard’s completed films from the 1950s to the 2000s in dialogue with others by him and a range of different directors, this programme sheds light on the huge and varied phantom body of unmade and abandoned ventures that lies behind or in the intervals in his completed oeuvre. It also draws attention to themes and connections that are less obvious from his completed work alone, such as the importance of animals and his dialogue with the work of Swiss author Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz. Each screening offers a way of thinking about a specific Godardian unrealised work, or category of unfinished project, and its relationship with his completed output. The programme casts in relief Godard’s creative process, which was characterised by tireless artistic research, experimentation, questioning, making, unmaking and reformulation.” – ICA programme notes

The season begins with the first on-screen manifestation of one of Godard’s unrealised proposals: The Wild Palms on 35 mm. This presentation interweaves the reels of Made in USA and Two or Three Things I Know About Her, following a structure of William Faulkner’s epynomous book. Other screenings explore abandoned adaptations, shelved shoots and earlier material that resurfaced later, such as ideas that evolved into Masculin féminin, La Chinoise, Passion, Notre musique or Ici et ailleurs.

This programme is curated by Michael Witt, author of the recently-published Jean-Luc Godard’s Unmade and Abandoned Projects (Bloomsbury, 2025).