Wanda

In the coal country of Pennsylvania, Wanda arrives late to her own hearing, gives up custody of her children without argument, and drifts off. She has no plan and no destination, following men she meets in bars until she ends up travelling with a bank robber. Barbara Loden wrote it, directed it and played the lead, and it remained her only feature. Shot on sixteen millimetre with a tiny crew and often roughly framed, it lands somewhere between documentary and fiction. Its nerve is in refusing to make its protagonist likeable: Wanda does not choose, she is carried, and the film neither excuses nor condemns that. It won a prize at Venice, then was forgotten for years before being rediscovered. Who it is for: viewers interested in the roots of American independent cinema and in the history of women directors. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for the protagonist to grow, which the film declines to supply.