Any director showing their movie at New York Film Festival has reason to be excited, but the Before trilogy director, Richard Linklater, gets to double that thrill this year. His film Blue Moon is premiering at NYFF, showing audiences an Ethan Hawke–starring drama following composer Lorenz Hart as he watches from the sidelines while his former writing partner Richard Rodgers’s Oklahoma! changes musical theater. And it’s joined by another Linklater film, Nouvelle Vague, which is about French director Jean-Luc Godard as he directs his landmark film, Breathless, an influential movie in the early French New Wave. “They’re different films, and I think it’s cool that they’re coming to the finish line around the same time,” Linklater said on the red carpet for the Nouvelle Vague premiere. Despite their differences, however, the films share a focus: the beginning of a new artistic movement.

“It’s two great moments in art history,” Linklater said. “Nouvelle Vague is about the beginning of something in ’59 Paris, the heart of the New Wave, with a cinematic revolution going on. Then on Broadway in ’43, you have the opening night of Oklahoma!, which is, in a different way, a musical-theater revolution. But it’s seen through the eyes of a guy being left behind.” While both movies are about artistic beginnings, the films’ tones are far apart. Nouvelle Vague is joyous, while Blue Moon is almost uncomfortably sad. “One’s a beginning and one’s an end,” Linklater said. “Beginnings are a little more fun, but ends are poignant.”

Taken together, the two films complement each other by showing both the excitement of groundbreaking artistic achievements and the desperation of the artists who are promptly forgotten about in the works’ wake. Audiences will get to see the double feature for themselves in late October: Blue Moon debuts in theaters on October 24, and Nouvelle Vague will stream on Netflix beginning October 31. Despite the sadness in Lorenz Hart’s Blue Moon arc, Linklater wants new artists who see Nouvelle Vague to walk away excited about their own ability to start an artistic revolution. “I want to remind young people that it’s not out of the ordinary,” he said. “It’s just youthful spirit. Anyone can do it. Every filmmaker making a first film has to have a revolution going on, in their head at least.”

Check out the rest of our coverage from New York Film Festival here.

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 NYFF shows off Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague, which together depict the excitement and the tragedy of new artistic movements.