Agnès Varda

Agnès Varda (born Arlette Varda; 30 May 1928 – 29 March 2019) was a Belgian-born French filmmaker, artist, and photographer.

Varda's work employed location shooting in an era when the limitations of sound technology made it easier and more common to film indoors, with constructed sets and painted backdrops of landscapes, rather than outdoors, on location. Her use of non-professional actors was also unconventional for 1950s French cinema. Varda's feature film debut was La Pointe Courte (1955), followed by Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), one of her most notable narrative films, Vagabond (1985), and Kung Fu Master (1988). Varda was also known for her work as a documentarian, with such works as 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 described Varda as "one of the Gods of Cinema". Among several other accolades, Varda received an Honorary Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first female filmmaker to win the award, a Golden Lion for Vagabond at the 1985 Venice Film Festival, a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Faces Places. In 2001, she was honored with an Honorary César. In 2017, she became the first female director to win an Academy Honorary Award.