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
Everyone Is Lying to You for Money
In which former OC star Ben McKenzie brushes off his economics degree and digs into the cryptocurrency conundrum. If bitcoin is truly all about transparency, how come no one can explain it?
Erupcja
Charli xcx headlines this indie gem about a young English couple coming unmoored over a few days in Warsaw. Will means to propose. Beth has cold feet -- and an escape hatch she has barely admitted to herself... Think Before Sunrise 2025.
Do You Love Me
Lana Daher's bravura and defiant non-fiction film is a cultural-historical self-portrait of Beirut, comprised entirely of film clips (many of them from dramatic features, but also from news reports, TV and home video) culled from the last 70 years.
Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other
This intimate and candid film by a younger husband and wife artist team is a delicate and immensely moving dual portrait of two artists, husband and wife, together and apart, at that point in life when the end casts a shadow over even the sunniest day.
Image: © Manon et Jacob and Final Cut For Real
Blue Road - The Edna O'Brien Story
Judging by this candid, funny, passionate biographical documentary, it would have been a wild ride to have been Irish novelist Edna O'Brien, or even to have been in her circle of friends and lovers. Well, for an hour and a half we can pretend we were.