Wanda - The Criterion Collection

Released: 17th April 2023. With her first and only film—a hard-luck drama she wrote, directed, and starred in—BARBARA LODEN turned in a ground-breaking work of American independent cinema, bringing to life a kind of character seldom seen on-screen. Set amid a soot-choked Pennsylvania landscape, and shot in an intensely intimate vérité style, the film takes up with distant and soft- spoken Wanda (Loden), who has left her husband, lost custody of her children, and now finds herself alone, drifting between dingy bars and motels, where she falls prey to a series of callous men—including a bank robber who ropes her into his next criminal scheme. A difficult-to-see masterpiece that has nonetheless exerted an outsize influence on generations of artists and filmmakers, Wanda is a compassionate and wrenching portrait of a woman stranded on society’s margins. SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES New 2K digital restoration by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, The Film Foundation, and Gucci, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack I Am Wanda, an hour-long documentary by Katja Raganelli featuring an interview with director Barbara Loden filmed in 1980 Audio recording of Loden speaking to students at the American Film Institute in 1971 Segment from a 1971 episode of The Dick Cavett Show featuring Loden The Frontier Experience, a short educational film from 1975 about a pioneer woman’s struggle to survive, directed by and starring Loden Trailer PLUS: An essay by film critic Amy Taubin