“I believe there is a miracle in Wanda. Usually there is a distance between representation and text, between subject and action. Here, this distance is completely annulled. There is an immediate and definitive coincidence between Barbara Loden and Wanda … This miracle, for me, is not in the acting. It’s because she seems more truly herself in the film – I didn’t know her personally – than she could have been in life. She’s more authentic in the film than in life. That’s completely miraculous.”

— Marguerite Duras

The only feature film American actress Barbara Loden ever wrote and directed tells the story of a young woman adrift in rust-belt Pennsylvania in the company of a smalltime crook. “I made Wanda as a way of confirming my own existence,” Loden said. She described Wanda as a woman who “doesn’t know what she wants but she knows what she doesn’t want … life is a mystery to her, and she’s trying the best thing she can, which is just to drop out. A lot of people do this and they become very passive. We have this kind of person in our society who lets everything walk over them.”

English with French subtitles

Pelechian transformeert beeldmateriaal van een treinrit in een metafoor voor de vorm van het leven. Vroege beelden van gezichten op de trein maken plaats voor landschappen, een reis door een donkere tunnel en uiteindelijk een verschijning van puur wit licht.