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    Beach of Sète (Sète, France)

    Sète and cinema share a long love story.
    The unique island has been a muse for the 7th art, both cinema and the small screen: A hundred films were shot in Sète – auteur films, shorts and features, as well as television series.

    photo of beach, sea in the back
    Beach of Sète

    Some have marked the history of cinema. One of the greatest ambassadors of Sète was the unforgettable filmmaker Agnès Varda, distinguished in particular by the European Film Academy’s honorary Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014, an honorary Oscar in 2018, and an honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
    She was the first to make the city known in 1955, with her first feature film LA POINTE-COURTE. It was partly thanks to this film that she became known as a founding member of “the New Wave”.
    In 2008, half a century later, Agnès Varda returned to Sète to shoot THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS which was nominated for the European Film Awards and won a French César for best Documentary.
    In this sensitive and poetic autobiographical movie, she retraces the course of her life, passing from beach to beach, sharing on film her attachment to Sète where she landed in 1940 on a boat with her family who had fled Belgium.
    The 12 km of beaches of Sète are particularly popular with cameras.
    Located on a strip of sand separating the Mediterranean Sea from the Etang de Thau, their shape and character give them a much sought-after insular and natural character.
    The light of Sète, crossing the canals, its colourful houses and its fishing port as well as its multi-cultural identity, form a natural setting of unusual beauty that inspires actors and artists.

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