Metrograph

A creative rebirth for its director, docu-essay The Gleaners and I finds the ever-curious, inventive Varda eagerly harnessing the possibilities of new, lightweight digital cameras to provide a 21st-century perspective on a recurring subject of 19th-century painting: the gleaners who followed in the wake of seasonal harvests, picking up the stray wheat stalks that farmers left behind. Celebrating the resourcefulness of modern-day food scavengers while observing the wasteful processes of big agribusinesses and the grocery store chains that they service, Varda finds kindred spirits, offering up an exemplary instance of her own hand-crafted filmmaking process as a rebuke to an increasingly corporatized, extravagant movie industry.