Les glaneurs et la glaneuse

Varda took the nineteenth-century painting *Les glaneurs* by Jean-François Millet as a starting point, and searched for people who still live off discarded (food) items. The vineyards in the Bourgogne are littered with scrawny, dried-up bunches of grapes. In that region, it is forbidden for outsiders to pick up the fallen bunches; the winemaker would rather let them shrivel than have strangers make off with them. People who want to pick up oysters around the island of Noirmoutier after a heavy storm and at low tide are also anxiously kept outside the boundary markers. Filmmaker Agnès Varda shows once again that any subject, no matter how simple, can grow into a rich and relevant story.