Sans Soleil

In the hands of another director, Sans Soleil would simply be a travelogue. A set of beautiful shots from Japan, Iceland, Guinea-Bissau, and San Francisco, arranged chronologically. Maybe accompanied with some rambling words about how beautiful the place is. However, filmmaker Chris Marker does differently. The way he puts them all together creates such an unusual documentary that experiments with the form, pairing clips with wandering narrations mixing questions, recollections, and loosely connected stories about time, space, and memory. Given that there’s four different versions shaped by the language it’s in, we can’t say that Sans Soleil is sans any intention. But what we can say is that it’s one of its kind.

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.