Sans Soleil purports to be footage of a peripatetic cameraman accompanied by a narration of his letters to a female friend. The film deals with the themes of memory and death by juxtaposing the two most antithetical nations of the world ; the successful, industrial society of Japan and the poor third world country Gunea-Bissau, "the two extreme poles of survival". The most accomplished film of his later works, it is a complexly fragmented, endlessly reflexive and often wryly witty look at life around the globe. Based on a series of letters, it seems almost a portrait of Marker himself, a globe-trotting cameraman who writes constantly, both with his pen and with his camera.