Conducted every 10 years, the Sight & Sound Best Movies of All Time poll is voted on by film critics, writers, professors and other experts in the field of cinema. A concurrent poll is open only to directors, and their results often vary wildly from the main poll. The Cosford Cinema will be showcasing ten selections from the filmmakers’ list every Sunday over the summer from June 4-August 13.

CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 (1962) | DIRECTOR: Agnes Varda | WITH: Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dominque Davray, Michel Legrand. |  RUNNING TIME: 1H 30M | UNRATED adult themes. | In French with English subtitles | 4K DCP PROJECTION

Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer (Corinne Marchand) set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy.

A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7, which ranked 60th on the directors' poll, is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.

"In “Cleo from 5 to 7,” the story of a woman who is killing time in the face of death, filmmaker Agnes Varda rendered the act of observation tensely dramatic. The title is literal: Varda follows Cleo (Corinne Marchand), a rising Parisian pop singer, for two hours before she sees a doctor who’ll deliver the results of her tests for cancer. (The story is only slightly condensed, into a ninety-minute movie.)

"The action is imbued with augury: the movie opens with a richly colorful sequence, of a tabletop filled with tarot cards that a fortune-teller is reading for Cleo, leaving her in despair. Cleo meets her friend and assistant, Angèle (Dominique Davray), at a café and collapses in tears. She returns to her Left Bank loft and is joined and abandoned there by her lover (José Luis de Vilallonga); she is visited by her songwriters (one of whom is played, exuberantly, by Michel Legrand himself); she dashes out to meet a friend who works as an artists’ model (Dorothée Blanck), but to little avail.

"As the threat of impending death weighs on Cleo, she seeks company with an obsessive frenzy and is thrown relentlessly back into solitude; seeking distraction amid the turbulence of city life, she finds only reminders of her mortal terror. Filming the sights (and sounds) of Paris with voracious visual delight, Varda embraces the turbulent distractions of public life, even as she filters them through Cleo’s shattered consciousness." -- Richard Brody, The New Yorker

Tickets are $5 and available at link above. UM students use code UMSTUDENT for free admission (Cane Card must be shown at the door).