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“The New Wave was essentially masculine. You know instinctively that to exist in men’s eyes, you have to fit their fantasies.” —Bernadette Lafont

Sex symbol, feminist icon, devoted mother: French actress Bernadette Lafont was a multi-faceted performer, who refused to be boxed into one role.

In BERNADETTE LAFONT: AND GOD CREATED THE FREE WOMAN, director Esther Hoffenberg tells Lafont’s story through carefully selected film clips spanning her career — from iconic roles in the New Wave films of Truffaut and Chabrol, to her award-winning turn in Paulette, playing a drug-dealing grandmother.

The documentary features extensive interviews with Lafont, and with her colleagues and lifelong friends Bulle Ogier and Jean-Pierre Kalfon. Hoffenberg also films Lafont’s granddaughters, sharing memories as they look through memorabilia and screen film clips in the rural home where they and Lafont all grew up.

“I’m not just a sex object,” Lafont says on a TV talk show, in a particularly telling moment. The male host tells her it’s “delightful to have a pretty smiling face” on the program, and that famous smile fades. Rebellious by nature, Lafont constantly reinvented herself, subverting expectations. Hoffenberg captures the way her cinematic and personal evolution mirror each other, and how they reflect the broader movement for women’s liberation.