Chantal Akerman
Chantal Anne Akerman (June 6, 1950 – October 5, 2015) was a Belgian film director, artist and professor of film at the City College of New York. Her best-known film is Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). Despite being categorised as such by others,... Read full bio →
Featured Characters
Roles you can spot in Whatthemovie snapshots
No Home Movie
Akerman films her mother Natalia, an elderly woman of Polish origin, in her Brussels apartment. For two hours, we will see them eating, chatting and sharing memories, sometimes accompanied by Sylvaine, Chantal's sister.
De l'autre côté
A documentary look at the fate of Mexicans who cross the border into the United States.
News from Home
Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman lives in New York. Filmed images of the City accompany texts of Akerman's loving mother back home in Brussels. The City comes more and more to the front while the words of the mother, read by Akerman herself, gradually fade away.
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
A lonely, ritual-obsessed widowed housewife does her daily chores, takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet. When one of her clients causes her to have her first-ever orgasm, her life slowly falls apart.
Je tu il elle
A woman suffers a subdued psychological breakdown in the wake of a devastating breakup.
La chambre
Furniture and clutter of one small apartment room become the subject of a moving still life—with Akerman herself staring back. This breakthrough formal experiment is Akerman's first film made in New York.
L'enfant aimé ou je joue à être une femme mariée
A young mother, alone with her daughter, confides in a friend who happens to be the director herself. Chantal Akerman, although she sympathizes with the mother, does not say a word.
Saute ma ville
A young girl shuts herself away in her apartment and goes about her business in a strange way, as she wastes the night in the kitchen – humming all along.