“Wanda” is a film that is regarded as one of the very best of the ‘70s but is perhaps a film that you are not familiar with. Written, directed, and starring Barbara Loden, “Wanda” is a rare film of the time, with a distinctly female voice and a story revolving around the existential crisis of a divorced woman. Now, almost 50 years after its release, a restoration of Loden’s film is getting a new run in theaters, hoping to open up more to the world of “Wanda.”
Loden’s only feature film as a director, “Wanda” won the award for Best Foreign Film at the Venice International Film Festival, and is regarded by many, including John Waters and Isabelle Huppert as a classic. In the trailer for the new restoration that will be seeing a limited run in theaters, you can see a glimpse at just how amazing Loden’s directorial debut is. It’s just a shame that “Wanda” wasn’t embraced by audiences during its initial run in theaters.
If you’re interested in checking out the restored version of the film, it will open in New York on July 20, with a planned national release shortly after.
Here’s the synopsis for the film:
Barbara Loden’s lone feature was a vanguard work by an America independent filmmaker, a totally uncompromised writer-director-star turn in which she embodies a listless young mother in Pennsylvania coal country who drifts away from her domestic prison and shacks up with perhaps the least glamorous outlaw in cinema history, Michael Higgins’s cantankerous “Mr. Dennis.” A deeply personal work by Loden, herself a child of Appalachia, with an extraordinary clear-eyed expression of dead-end despair, a life-marred document of a scuffed, sad, left-behind working-class world. Without question, one of the greatest American films of the 1970s. The restoration will debut at the Metrograp in New York on July 20, 2018 with a national roll out to follow.