A structuralist masterwork by Belgium’s dearly departed genius of contemplation, Chantal Akerman. Following a minimalist, metaphysical narrative depicting Akerman’s life as a young filmmaker living in New York in 1971, News from Home is composed entirely of lingering, meditative 16mm plates of the urban landscape, as Akerman reads a series of mundane letters from her loving mother, most of them pleading for a reply.
One part city symphony — offering a spellbinding glimpse of New York City in its final gasp before the Trumpian renovictions of the 1980s — one part epistolary text, and one part introspective meditation on the meanings of home, this is a movie that hovers over me like my own mother’s ghost. I love Akerman’s soft-spoken voice over — constantly engulfed and eclipsed by the rumbling din of midnight traffic — and her mute homeward lurch in the film’s final frames. This movie reminds me that our sense of home is so intensely mediated by our relationship with our moms.
Supported by
Community Partner
Chantal Akerman
France
1976
In French with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Credits
Cinematography
Babette Mangolte, Jim Asbell
Editor
Francine Sandberg
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Agatha's Almanac
Shot over six years on vibrant 16mm film, Agatha’s Almanac is an artful documentary portrait of filmmaker Amalie Atkin’s octogenarian aunt, who has fashioned herself an endearingly simple and self-sustaining lifestyle on her Manitoba farm.
Calle Málaga
Seventy-nine-year-old María Ángeles lives independently in Tangier's Spanish quarter. When her daughter pressures her into selling her apartment, she refuses to give in, finding in her old age a new resilience and an unexpected romantic connection.
The Art of Adventure
The unbelievable adventure story of how painter Robert Bateman and ecologist Bristol Foster drove a Land Rover from Africa to Australia in 1957, developing a love of nature to last a lifetime. An inspirational love letter to the adventure of life itself.
The Blue Trail
77-year-old Tereza makes a break for the Brazilian jungle in this trippy septuagenarian fantasy, the latest from Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro is a quirky picaresque, lushly photographed and filled with mordant humour.
Follies
After two kids and 16 years of marriage, François and Julie decide to open up their relationship in a bid to rekindle their dwindling sex life. A painfully hilarious and brutally honest depiction of love, sex, and intimacy in the age of the internet.
Castration Movie Anthology 1: Traps
Louise Weard's underground movie is a talk-a-thon in two chapters and four hours: a sex worker contemplates having her testicles removed, and a movie production assistant pitches himself right out of a job, and other misadventures in Vancouver life.