Cléo (Corinne Marchand), a young French singer, believes that she has cancer. While waiting for the results of her biopsy she calls in to a fortune teller, goes shopping with her housekeeper for a hat and visits friends for coffee. Before returning to her doctor she meets and has a brief affair with a young soldier bound for war in Algeria the following day.

Cléo de 5 à 7 was the second film from Belgian director Agnès Varda. It contains many of the classical nouvelle vague elements: snatches from passing conversations, the division of the film into chapters and a freewheeling use of the camera. However as one of the few women directors to emerge from this period and she gives the film a more convincing female perspective than her male counterparts and draws particular poignancy from the contrast between Cléo’s supposed illness and the real danger faced by her soldier lover.