About Agnès Varda

Belgian-born Varda is often regarded as the mother of the French New Wave. Her debut feature, LA POINTE COURTE (1956) – which she wrote and directed without any formal training – is seen as the film that sparked the movement. Throughout her career spanning over 60 years, Varda has explored various forms of filmmaking, including shorts, documentaries, and narrative feature films. Her notable works include the New Wave classic CLEO FROM 5 TO 7, LE BONHEUR, VAGABOND, her autobiographical documentary THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS, and her latest piece, FACES PLACES. 

Agnès Varda is born to a Greek father and a French mother in Belgium. Without attending film school or having industry experience, Varda emerges as an early influential figure in the French New Wave with her debut feature, LA POINTE COURTE, which precedes significant works by Truffaut and Godard. This accomplishment earns her the unofficial title of “Mother of the French New Wave.” Varda’s second feature, CLEO FROM 5 TO 7, achieves major international success. The film, set in real time as a pop singer waits for medical test results, is regarded as a milestone in world cinema and particularly in the French New Wave. In the same year, she marries Jacques Demy, the renowned director of films like THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, LOLA, and THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT. The visually rich LE BONHEUR surprises audiences with its unexpected ending and wins the Prix Louis Delluc and the Silver Bear at Berlin.

Varda's work utilized location shooting during a time when sound technology constraints made it simpler and more typical to film indoors, using constructed sets and painted landscape backdrops, rather than shooting outdoors on location. Her choice of non-professional actors was also unusual for 1950s French cinema. Varda's first feature film was La Pointe Courte (1955), followed by Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), one of her most acclaimed narrative films, Vagabond (1985), and Kung Fu Master (1988). Varda was also renowned for her documentary work, including Black Panthers (1968), The Gleaners and I (2000), The Beaches of Agnès (2008), Faces Places (2017), and her final film, Varda by Agnès (2019).

Filmmaker Martin Scorsese called Varda "one of the Gods of Cinema".^[2] Among her many accolades, Varda received an Honorary Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first female filmmaker to earn this award, a Golden Lion for Vagabond at the 1985 Venice Film Festival, and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Faces Places. In 2001, she was awarded an Honorary César. In 2017, she became the first female director to receive an Academy Honorary Award.

Her passing elicited a heartfelt reaction from the filmmaking community, with Martin Scorsese issuing a statement saying, "I seriously doubt that Agnès Varda ever followed anyone else's path, in any aspect of her life or her art. Each of her extraordinary handmade films, so beautifully balanced between documentary and fiction, is unique—every image, every cut … She left behind an incredible body of work: films both large and small, playful and tough, generous and solitary, lyrical and unflinching … and alive."