No Home Movie

CW: concentration camps, suicide mention What tragedies have our mothers endured. It seems clear to me that the world's improvements are minimal, that what "progress" we make in how oppressed people are treated by our oppressors is a minor fraction of what we deserve, of…

Sally Jane Black

"The opening frame of Chantal Akerman’s final film No Home Movie is a near-static shot of a barren tree being torn apart by vicious bursts of wind. The old tree doesn’t fall, but you have to wonder how it persists in spite of the surroundings. She holds her camera on this…

Willow Maclay

"Where is Chantal?" Tying her shoes, getting up, closing the curtains, and leaving the frame as composed as she began it. Sounds continue, but their sources are offscreen. I don't know what drove Chantal Akerman to share so much of herself with us, but I wish I could…

Erin Provolone

"It was so great to have you here." "I haven't gone yet."

Josh Lewis

I've been missing my parents and their home, so it felt like time to revisit this. My parents were very loving and also incredibly annoying, so I'm in the market for movies about grief and loss that are this tough and unsentimental. Natalia Akerman's apartment looks like…

Will Sloan

It’s difficult to watch this film objectively without considering the tragic circumstances that surround it. Its normal to watch a film in which the characters/actors that occupy it are now deceased, but in the case of No Home Movie, it almost feels like that element is…

Sophy

To the mother who raised me on her own when I was too young to understand all the sacrifices she made. All the money she invested in my education and extracurriculars while she spent her nights in our apartment doing extra work to pay for it all, all the time she spent…

reibureibu

super frustrating. lost in the limbo between hyper-personal document and universal essay film, Akerman's portrait of her mother's final years (months?) is exactly the kind of record that we always tell ourselves we'll make of our parents and grandparents... a video…

davidehrlich

We're all alone, even if we share our loneliness with others. There are bursts of childish exuberance as simple as pop music playing on the radio, mostly heartbreaking because of how much of a literal home movie this is. This is exactly the movie I would make in the same…

Josiah Morgan