News from Home

+ intro by Nicole Flattery, writer and Sight and Sound columnist

This desolate musing on the elusive nature of home exquisitely juxtaposes New York’s lonely, empty streets with letters from ‘a distant voice’, Akerman’s mother.

  • Director

    Chantal Akerman

  • Belgium-France 1976. 89min

  • Digital (restoration)

  • French version with English subtitles

This beautifully captured time capsule of 1970s New York City is Akerman’s most elegantly minimalist and profoundly affecting meditation on dislocation and estrangement. Over a series of exactingly composed shots of Manhattan, the filmmaker reads letters sent by her mother years earlier. A tender meditation on urban alienation and personal disconnection.

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