In 2000, Agnès Varda travelled the French countryside to study the world of foragers and scavengers called The Gleaners. Describing herself as a gleaner of ideas and images from interior as well as exterior journeys gives the director a special connection with her subjects in this honest and intriguing documentary.

"Agnes Varda of course is a gleaner herself. She is gleaning the gleaners. And in what appears to be a documentary she conceals a tender meditation about her own life, and life itself." 4/4 Roger Ebert

Revered for her bold political and autobiographically inspired work, Agnès Varda is a seminal feminist filmmaker and matriarch of the French New Wave. Her influential career began in the 1950s with La Pointe Courte – often considered the unofficial first film of the New Wave – and continues seven decades later, as in 2017 she became the first female director to be awarded an honorary Oscar. To celebrate the release of Agnès Varda’s new film Faces Places (which will be coming to our screen in October), we will be screening a selection of her work.