The Gleaners and I begins with Millet’s painting, ‘The Gleaners’ as Varda constructs this film as if she is writing a diary, in a subjective style. Individuals who gather up leftover grains and fruits at the end of the harvest, pick up oysters by the muddy riverside, live off garbage, and even make artworks from the trash; the film captures these diverse characters collecting diverse objects in diverse locations. The results are the rediscovery of our relationships to material objects and to each other, and a sincerity by which meaningless objects can be transformed into an amazing artwork. If the depiction of poor farmers and urban homeless people indirectly reveal the internal contradictions of French society, then the reckless spending of modern society is being criticized through the voices of recycling artists and environmental activists. (JOO You-shin)