Godard’s The Image Book is a fragmented dense essay film imbued with an almost horror-like atmosphere. It harbours the majority of the traits characteristic of his late-period work: deliberately disintegrated outlines of connections, references to the self-reflection of cinema, as well as uncompromising modifications of picture and sound. A rapid-fire montage of movies and media, mingling news headlines, drawings, digitally distorted clips from Hollywood classics and the brutal YouTube Isis propaganda, the film above all bears witness to the estrangement and macro-aggression that dominate today’s world. The film, embracing cultural theories and conceptual art, also serves to prove that the “troublesome contemporary” Jean-Luc Godard still believes in the irreplaceable role of cinema. The jury awarded The Image Book the first Special Palme d'Or in the history of the Cannes festival.