Documenteur

Conceived as a shadow film to Agnès Varda’s upbeat Mur Murs (on Los Angeles’s murals), Documenteur stars Varda’s editor, Sabine Mamou, as a French woman “suffering from exile” while living in Los Angeles with her young son (played by Mathieu Demy, Varda and Jacques Demy’s son). Varda described it as “a film that exists between image and sound . . . meant to leave room to add our own feelings to the film, to complete its emotional load.” Varda felt this work was central in her filmography—a work that was very close to reality, very autobiographical, and the only film where she really lets go and allows herself and the film to get lost in emotion. “Her masterpiece” (Pierre-Henri Gibert).