Movies: Chantal Akerman

A lonely widowed housewife does her daily chores and takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet. Slowly, her ritualized daily routines begin to fall apart....

A woman suffers a subdued psychological breakdown in the wake of a devastating breakup....

Ariane and Simon met down by the water. Simon has managed to prize Ariane away from her friends, a bunch of free and arrogant girls, and move her into his place, with her own room at the end of the hall and her own bathroom next to his. He has taken ...

On a trip across Western Europe to promote her newest release, filmmaker Anna encounters several individuals—familiar and otherwise—and attends to their discontents....

Three young women at a hair salon all like the son of the clothing store proprietors across the mall. Although Robby is selfish and shallow, he's appealing to Lili, the salon's manager, who's trendy and also the salon-owner's moll; to Mado, who's inn...

Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman lives in New York. Filmed images of the City accompany texts of Akerman's loving mother back home in Brussels. The City comes more and more to the front while the words of the mother, read by Akerman herself, gradual...

Dr. Henry Harriston is a successful psychoanalyst in New York City. When he is near a nervous breakdown, he arranges to change his flat with Beatrice Saulnier from France for a while. Both don't know each other and both find themselves deeply involve...

A young girl shuts herself away in her apartment and goes about her business in a strange way, as she wastes the night in the kitchen – humming all along....

In the 70s, actress Delphine Seyrig and director Carole Roussopoulos, both militant feminists, were the pioneers of video activism in France. They documented the demonstrations of French feminists and used the new technologies to counter the poor rep...

Following over two dozen different people in the almost wordless atmosphere of a dark night in a Brussels town, Akerman examines acceptance and rejection in the realm of romance....

Jake and Mati are two outsiders in the northerly Portuguese city of Porto who once experienced a brief connection. A mystery remains about the moments they shared, and in searching through memories, they relive the depths of a night uninhibited by th...

Scenes of life in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc....

A tale of an occidental merchant, Kaspar Almayer, whose dreams of riches for his beloved daughter, Nina, collapse under the weight of his own greed and prejudice....

When her mother moves in, the life of a writer gets crowded....

Furniture and clutter of one small apartment room become the subject of a moving still life—with Akerman herself staring back. This breakthrough formal experiment is Akerman's first film made in New York....

The main character, Michele, spends the hour discussing her views of life with some old and new friends, and tries to understand her own feelings about her place in the world and her sexuality, while a camera follows along at close range....

What makes European cinema so special? Find out in Paul Joyce’s feature-length documentary, Pictures of Europe, which examines the differences between American independent and Hollywood movies and films from European directors. Featuring luminary ic...

The Midnight Sun Film Festival is held every June in the Finnish village of Sodankylä beyond the arctic circle — where the sun never sets. Founded by Aki and Mika Kaurismäki along with Anssi Mänttäri and Peter von Bagh in 1985, the festival has playe...

An omnibus project examining, well, the state of the world....

Unemployed guests constantly pour into Jane's house, mistaking her for the previous tenant, a mystery man. Jane, though unemployed, lives her innocent life, with brief dreams and quiet hopes for her future. Her friend Suleiman, though bankrupt, lives...