Les glaneurs et la glaneuse

"LES GLANEURS ET LA GLANEUSE is a miracle of freedom and precision, curiosity and patience, playfulness and tenderness. The director of 'Vogelfrei' and 'Cléo von 5-7' begins with François Millet's famous image of the spike gatherers and from there goes from the hundredth to the thousandth - or rather the other way around: she gets closer and closer to her subject by taking it further and further and in the end paints a picture of our (throwaway) society that is as poetic as it is political." (Michael Althen)

On her travels through France, Agnès Varda found numerous contemporary collectors - people who, out of necessity, passion or simply by chance, (re)collect things that others have left lying around or thrown away. At the same time, Varda's cinematic method is related to that of collecting: She uses her camera to collect images along her travel route, picking them up from the street, so to speak, and also uses those that other filmmakers would have left in the editing room. The result is not a social reportage, but a reflection on a society that lives from what falls through the cracks. (after: Michael Althen; press release)