The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later

A short follow-up in which Varda returns to her own documentary. Two years earlier she had filmed the people who glean in France: those who take what is left in the fields, who sort through what is thrown out after a market, who get food from bins. The film was discussed far more than expected and letters came to the director. This one opens with those letters. Varda opens the envelopes, reads them and shows the gifts sent to her; people have posted her things they gleaned themselves. Then she takes the camera and finds the people she filmed before. Some are in the same place, some have had their circumstances change. A few became known after the film and talk about what that did to them. That is where its interest lies: the director is examining the consequences of her own work. What a documentary does to the lives of the people it films becomes part of the subject. It is short, around an hour. Agnès Varda directs and narrates. The natural companion to the first film for anyone who likes documentary cinema and Varda's personal voice. For someone thinking of watching it alone, this one requires knowing the earlier film.