30 May 1928 Brussels, Belgium – 29 March 2019 Paris, France.
The Gleaners and I (Les glaneurs et la glaneuse) is a documentary film by Agnès Varda that entered into competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, and later went on to win awards around the world. In a 2014 Sight & Sound poll, film critics voted The Gleaners and I the eighth best documentary film of all time. In 2016, the film appeared at No. 99 on BBC's list of the 100 greatest films of the 21st century.
The film tracks a series of gleaners as they hunt for food, knicknacks, thrown away items, and personal connection. Varda travels the French countryside as well as the city to find and film not only field gleaners, but also urban gleaners and those connected to gleaners, including a wealthy restaurant owner whose ancestors were gleaners. The film spends time capturing the many aspects of gleaning and the many people who glean to survive.
Varda's other subjects include artists who incorporate recycled materials into their work, symbols she discovers during her filming (including a clock without hands and a heart-shaped potato), and the French laws regarding gleaning versus abandoned property.
