Wanda

With Wanda, filmed in cinema-verité style, on 16mm grained film, Barbara Loden signed one of the most important debut works of American independent cinema. This is the story of the unlikely partnership between a mining woman from Pennsylvania (embodied by the director herself), abandoned by her husband and the men she met adrift, and a bandit (Michael Higgins), by whom she lets herself be captivated. Defined, in Loden's own words, as an “anti-Bonnie and Clyde”, the film makes a radical revisionism of the road movie genre, giving it an austere and realistic tone. Vetted into obscurity for decades, despite critical enthusiasm, Wanda is an enigmatic, fascinating and utterly unique “character study”, that explores the gap between the public guilt and the unacceptance of personal guilt.