The Gleaners & I (2000)

Agnes Varda's The Gleaners & I has such a light touch that you might miss it. Not your everyday documentary, it mostly follows the art of gleaning--picking up objects and food others leave as trash--but carefully expands widely on this theme. It's the expansion, some might say tangents, that make this film work so well. Varda connects gleaning to artmaking, the certainty of death and 18 wheeler trucks in a way that compels small sighs. Although the filmmaker at times seems completely out of control, don't underestimate the sharpness of her lightness: the ending will stay with you.