Even now this film is still absolutely ground-breaking, it first came to international prominence following the release of 12 Monkeys as its inspiration.

This is a film of a collection of still images with narrative made into a story.

The story as it is, is that a group of post World War 3 scientists attempt to send a heroic man back in time to the days pre-war to try and ensure the war is stopped.

They ask the man to concentrate on a boyhood memory whilst filling him with drugs to return to the past and this is where we see the iconic image of a man passing himself as a child. But once in the past the man has a dilemma, why would anyone return to a desolate post-apocolyptic future when the past seems so much more fun, so much easier and so much more relaxed.

Time travelling assassins are sent to destroy the messenger and the story progresses.

For me this is art film at its highest level, its unbelievable to think this ground breaking french piece of science fiction was made in 1962, it feels so fresh and scary today. The photographic images are exceptionally varied and wild and you forget that this is a series of still images and become lost in the story.

I would recommend this to anyone interested in the history of Science Fiction, or in ground breaking filmatic experiments. Chris Marker didn't do much else in the cinema but this inspired many other films and is still a great film today.

The DVD comes with Sans Soleil an inferior sequel. Both are dubbed and this is fine as the images tell a story in any language. The Dvd was quite rare until recently but costs £12.71 in Amazon.com.