Let's be honest - this film is stunning film, but it's not easy watching.

Top prize winner at the Venice film festival, excellent international critical reception - this is groundbreaking work.

ABOUT / PLOT

The film follows Mona, a vagabond, and her random encounters with strangers.

The film is a fiction film, but it takes the form of a pseudo-documentary on Mona, and tries to understand what she did or what she was like, including through interviews with people who met her.

This film really shows what a free and original filmmaker Agnes Varda is: she adopts this unusual format of a pseudo-documentary, which serves her subject perfectly. It reinforces the mystery around the main character, as the film maker is put in the same position as the audience: an external viewer.

This format also allows the pretend documentary-maker, through the voice of Agnes Varda, to make her own comments.

Great format, great subject, perfect film.

REVIEWS

The reviews for this film are excellent, here are some extracts:

"What a film this is. Like so many of the greatest films, it tells us a very specific story, strong and unadorned, about a very particular person."

ROGER EBERT IN THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

"With its sparse, poetic imagery, Vagabond is a stunner."

THE CRITERION COLLECTION

"'Vagabond" is so effective it can be grueling to sit through. But, reminiscent of Alain Renais, an early collaborator of hers, Agnes Varda has created a world too painfully real to ignore."

Excellent review in the NEW TORK TIMES

"Agnes Varda's Vagabond is an excoriating, subtly disturbing portrait of alienation and lost direction."

STRICTLY FILM SCHOOL

"A zealous, passionate woman who refuses the platitudes that characterise so much of everyday interaction, Varda brings her sensibility to this study, transforming Mona's [the main character] bleak journey into a searing and compassionate portrait that implicates her viewers as much as her characters."

Great article about the film on SENSES OF CINEMA

PRIZES

The film won numerous prestigious awards, among which:

- Golden Lion (first prize) at the Venice Film Festival in 1985

- Best Actress for Sandrine Bonnaire at the Cesar Awards (French BAFTAs)

- Best Actress and Best Foreign Film at the Los Angeles Film CRitics Association Awards

- Best Film at the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics

PART OF THE AGNES VARDA FILM SEASON (12 Nov - 26 Nov)

Agnes Varda, French film director born in 1928, is one of the most celebrated female directors in the history of cinema.

Discreet, humble, intelligent, confident and origianl all at once, she is impossible to classify or categorise. "Varda is very much her own creation" (Sight and Sound).

This season would not have been possible without the support of the Institut Francais and CulturesFrance, and we are very thankful for their help.