Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse

Agnès Varda is travelling through France in search of tramps, junk dealers and beggars who, by choice or by necessity, live on the trash thrown away in dumps. They are today's gleaners, feeding on the waste of consumerism, in the same way as once poor peasant women went into the fields to collect the grain left behind after the crops had been cut. Among them there are people that have been eating only garbage for years, improvized technicians making appliances by getting together all the bits and pieces they found in dumps; artists walking down the streets as if they were shopping in a supermarket. The director defines herself a gleaner too and pours into the film the emotions of past times when she had to face precariousness.