No Home Movie

Chantal Akerman's last film was shot in her mother Natalia's apartment in Brussels. Born in Poland, Natalia had survived Auschwitz and had spoken of it with her daughter almost never. For two hours the film shows them together: eating, talking, sometimes with Chantal's sister. When Akerman is away the contact continues over Skype, and that distance on a screen becomes one of the film's central ideas. She shot it with small handheld cameras and her phone, cutting forty hours of material to under two. Natalia died in 2014. The film screened at Locarno, and Akerman died in 2015, days before its American premiere. It is therefore read as both a portrait of a mother and a farewell. Who it's for: viewers who know Akerman's cinema and experimental documentary. Who it's not for: anyone waiting for events, or with no patience for long static shots; the film is deliberately slow.