Sans Soleil ^UP127

Sans Soleil (French pronunciation: [sɑ̃ sɔ.lɛj], "Sunless") is a 1983 French documentary directed by Chris Marker, a meditation on the nature of human memory, showing the inability to recall the context and nuances of memory, and how, as a result, the perception of personal and global histories is affected. The title Sans Soleil is from the song cycle Sunless by Modest Mussorgsky "although only a brief fragment of the Mussorgsky's cycle of songs (a brief passage of 'Sur le fleuve', the last of the songs in the cycle, which concerns itself with death) is heard in the course of the film." Sans Soleil is composed of stock footage, clips from Japanese movies and shows, excerpts from other films as well as documentary footage shot by Marker.

Sans Soleil is often considered to be one of the greatest movies ever, frequently appearing in "best films" lists. In a 2014 Sight and Sound poll, film critics voted Sans Soleil the third-best documentary film of all time.
Expanding the documentary genre, this experimental essay-film is a composition of thoughts, images, and scenes, mainly from Japan and Guinea-Bissau, "two extreme poles of survival". Some other scenes were filmed in Cape Verde, Iceland, Paris, and San Francisco. A female narrator reads from letters supposedly sent to her by the (fictitious) cameraman Sandor Krasna.

Sans Soleil is often labeled as a documentary, travelogue, or essay-film. Despite the film's modest use of fictional content, it should not be confused with a mockumentary (mock documentary). The fictional content derived from the juxtaposition of narrative and image adds meaning to the film along with occasional nondescript movement between locations and lack of character-based narrative.