After the obituaries for its creator and just as a new documentary anchored in its production arrives, Chantal Akerman‘s final work, No Home Movie, is coming to the United States this week in a limited release, courtesy of Icarus Films. One of the best films we saw at last year’s TIFF — as well as a highlight among NYFF’s excellent line-up and a top selection among 2016 offerings seen so far — it’s a tough film, filtered through grief over the director’s mother’s passing (the opening shot alone is one of the greatest expressions of that feeling I’ve ever seen) and fittingly unsparing in its formal construction. If one can tune into its rhythms — none of which are foreign to her output — the experience is immensely rewarding.
As we said in our highly complimentary review, “Removed from anything resembling ostentatious formalism, it fits into what’s typically referred to by cinephiles as a ‘late master’ period, in which the auteur has dropped all pretenses and adapted a full-on laid-back, emotionally direct directorial hand. This likely couldn’t be more the case, and in a film culture where the world’s most prestigious festival is pushing European filmmakers to only do English-language co-productions with movie stars while brushing aside contemporary cinema’s most daring work, even something as small-scale as this feels as confrontational as the rest of the Akerman oeuvre.”
See the trailer below (via Apple), as well as a video essay about the spaces in the film by Kevin B. Lee:
Synopsis:
The final film from groundbreaking auteur Chantal Akerman, NO HOME MOVIE is a portrait of her relationship with her mother, Natalia, a Holocaust survivor and familiar presence in many of her daughter’s films.
No Home Movie will enter a limited release on April 1.