Film Forum

France, 2018
Directed by Agnès Varda, JR
Starring Agnès Varda, JR
In French with English subtitles
Approx. 90 min.

In one of the most successful films from her late-career renaissance, 89-year-old Varda reached a wide audience and earned an Academy Award® nomination for Best International Feature with this road movie made in collaboration with the 33-year-old muralist and photographer JR. The two of them travel around the villages of France in JR’s photo truck, taking photographs of the people they meet, from which they make enormous murals that are displayed on houses and barns.

Presented with support from The Helen Frankenthaler Endowed Fund for Films on Art and The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Fund

Reviews

“FACES PLACES is a wonderful exercise in memory and merriment, in instinct and improvisation. ‘The idea of you directing my toes delights me,’ Varda tells JR as he photographs her feet. ‘I’ll play along.’ No filmmaker alive today plays as delightfully as Varda does.”
– Sukhdev Sandhu, Sight and Sound

“FACES PLACES reveals itself as a powerful, complex, and radical work. Ms. Varda’s modesty is evidence of her mastery, just as her playful demeanor is the expression of a serious and demanding aesthetic commitment. Almost by stealth, but also with cheerful forthrightness, she communicates a rich and challenging array of feelings and ideas.”
– A.O. Scott, The New York Times