In this tender masterpiece, the French New Wave director François Truffaut follows the romantic misadventures of his alter ego, Antoine Doinel, to present several stories of people desperately searching for love.

It is now 1968, and the mischievous and perpetually love-struck Doinel has been dishonourably discharged from the army and released onto the streets of Paris, where he stumbles into the unlikely profession of private detective.

Almost 10 years after his first feature, Truffaut demonstrates his mastery of cinematic mise-en-scène in a film with the unpredictable rhythm of silent comedy, the choreography of Lubitsch's doors, the social romanticism of Renoir, and the emotional suspense of Hitchcock - three of Truffaut's masters. 

Yet everything is Truffaut, especially in the interweaving of sentimental micro-stories and in the search for the spark of a daily life that is simultaneously ordinary and fantastical. 

Truffaut about Stolen Kisses: Whenever I finish a film, I realise it always turns out sadder than I intended. It happens every time. With Stolen Kisses, I wanted to make a comedy. I’m not even sure whether it is one, but we certainly had a wonderful time making it. When I first started making films, I believed there were funny things and sad things, so I simply put both into my films. Later, I tried to move abruptly from sadness to comedy. Today, I think the most interesting thing is to make the same film both funny and sad at once. Stolen Kisses is a film that hopes to resemble a song.