Daguerréotypes

Agnès Varda is maybe one of the most loved and influential filmmakers of the past century: idiosyncratic, visionary, iconic. And always empathic and profoundly human. The Brussels-born filmmaker was, together with François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, one of the founders of the Nouvelle Vague, but she kept reinventing herself and the art of film until her death in 2019. “She was a woman who made films with the same kind of freedom as Godard or Truffaut – but with more heart and humor.” Those words by Greta Gerwig (LADY BIRD, LITTLE WOMEN, BARBIE) are as telling as they are praising.

After the birth of her son, film pioneer Agnès Varda spent her days at home, but she stayed as curious as ever – in her work and personal life – and wanted to learn more about the people and places surrounding her. So Varda found her inspiration for DAGUERRÉOTYPES close to her front door: in the Parisian Rue Daguerre, where she lived and worked sinds the 1950s.

The director pointed her camera on the shopkeepers whose stores breathed life in the street. The bakers, tailors, butchers, music retailers, driving instructors, and others who, between the daily rituals of their work, talk about their lives, relationships and dreams. She mixes her photographic eye for detail and silent portraits with her cinematic talent for finding and capturing visual rhythms and resonances between moving images. Varda uncovers in DAGUERRÉOTYPES the rich social structure of a whole world, without leaving her street.