Synopsis
The Gleaners and I (2000) is a documentary you can watch online on iFILM, directed and shot almost entirely by Agnès Varda wielding a compact DV camera on her own.
She follows France's gleaners — people who scour harvested fields for stray potatoes, pick through Paris market stalls after the vendors pack up, or haul objects home from the kerb. The subjects range from a soft-spoken volunteer teaching French to immigrants to an artist who wallpapers his trailer with street discards. Each has a logic for what they gather and why nothing should simply be thrown away.
Varda also turns the lens on herself, studying her own hands for the marks of age. That self-scrutiny lifts the film above sociology: it becomes a record of a filmmaker asking what she, too, collects from the world. A César Award for Best Documentary followed, and the film has since become a reference point for the essay-film form. Watch The Gleaners and I online on iFILM.
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