Down There

Chantal Akerman stays for a month in Tel Aviv. The place she stays is an apartment looking out at the sea. The sea, the inside of the apartment and the passing days are all the material the account has. Over that month Akerman thinks about her childhood, her family and her Jewish identity. What she thinks is the real subject. The film narrates no events; it records a month spent in one room. Distance becomes a matter both of place and of person. The seventy seven minutes pass inside a single apartment. The account stands between documentary and personal diary. Chantal Akerman’s documentary, a coproduction of Belgium, France and Israel, was completed in 2006.