The television network Turner Classic Movies has been a huge staple of my film-loving life and an introduction to a ridiculous number of my favorite movies, so it took me all of two seconds to respond when I got an email in the summer of 2021 asking if I’d be interested in working with them on one of their upcoming seasonal programs. In October of that year, they aired a series of films under the banner of New Waves Around the World, celebrating a collection of the new waves that have occurred across history when a particular country’s film industry is revamped in an exciting and seismic way — for example, the French New Wave in the late 1950s / early 60s that not only revitalized the French film industry but introduced the world to directors like Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and Agnes Varda. The video that TCM commissioned serves as a ten-minute introduction to the concept as a whole in order to succinctly define the New Waves, illustrate a few of their common traits and help guide viewers in order to give them the proper context in which these films can be viewed, with a particular focus on Roberto Rossellini’s Italian Neorealist classic ROME, OPEN CITY and Godard’s BREATHLESS.