The Gleaners & I (2000) on Netflix
NR20001h 22mDocumentary
Gleaners gather what farms and cities leave behind or throw out, whether out of necessity or for artistic reasons. A filmmaker with a digital camera travels France to meet them.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.7/1010,366 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes93%
Trailer
Plot summary
A filmmaker travels through rural and urban France with a digital camera, recording people who gather what has been left behind. Some glean fields after the harvest, taking potatoes and other crops the machines missed or that were rejected for size or minor damage. Others collect discarded food and objects in cities, at green markets and in the streets. Those interviewed include a Michelin two-star chef, a restaurant owner whose ancestors gleaned, and vineyard owners, among them the psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche. Artists who work with recycled materials appear, as does Alain, an urban gleaner with a master's degree who teaches French to immigrants. Lawyers explain the French laws that separate gleaning from abandoned property. The filmmaker also films objects she finds, among them heart-shaped potatoes and a clock without hands.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Gleaners & I (2000)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While shooting, Agnès Varda once forgot to turn off her camera; as it hung at her side it filmed the shifting ground and her dangling lens cap, and she put that footage in the finished film, with jazz music, as "The Dance of the Lens Cap".
- The Gleaners and I was the first of Agnès Varda's films to be shot with a digital camera, specifically a Sony TRV900 Mini DV Camcorder.
- The French Union of Film Critics declared The Gleaners and I the best French film of 2000, breaking with tradition by not picking a dramatic film for the honour.
