Oncle Yanco

While in San Francisco to promote her latest film, Agnès Varda gets a tip from an acquaintance. In Sausalito, a town in the San Francisco Bay Area, there lives a Greek-born painter named Jean Varda. Could they be related?

As soon as they meet, they discover not only that they are indeed related, but that they are also kindred spirits. Enthusiastic about the encounter, Varda quickly sorts out a 35mm camera and, over the course of two days, films a playful portrait of “Uncle Yanco”—who is actually her cousin and whom she had never heard of before.

Their meeting—which they reenact in multiple takes in French, English, and Greek—is a meeting of two creative minds who view the world with an imaginative and colorful gaze. With his drooping mustache and pastel pink sweater, this bohemian bon vivant guides Varda, and the viewer, through his world, including the hippies who gather around him, his collage-like paintings of Byzantine cities, and his deep love of the sea.