Born in Brussels in 1950 and the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Chantal Akerman directed more than forty films (short, medium, and feature-length) in almost 50 years, spanning fiction, documentary, musical comedy and literary adaptation. Today she is regarded as one of cinema’s most important and influential directors of her generation. Chantal Akerman’s personal, non-conformist body of work has become increasingly relevant since her death in 2015, resonating with cinephiles globally as well as filmmakers including Joanna Hogg (The Eternal Daughter), Payal Kapadia (All We Imagine as Light), Céline Sciamma (Petite Maman), Sean Baker (Anora), Alice Diop (Saint Omer) Jacques Audiard (Emilia Pérez) and Charlotte Wells (Aftersun) citing her radical and experimental approach to filmmaking as a direct inspiration.
Although best known for her landmark second feature, Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), which topped the Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time Poll in 2022 (becoming the first female-directed film to take the number one spot since the poll’s inception in 1952), Akerman never stopped rebelling, continuously experimenting throughout her career to challenge the formal and narrative boundaries of film. In February 2025 the BFI celebrates Akerman’s extraordinary impact on contemporary cinema with a (near) complete major two-month retrospective season at BFI Southbank, encompassing fiction features, documentaries, shorts, and archive interviews, a BFI Distribution UK-wide cinema release of a 2K restoration of Jeanne Dielman on the 7th of February)as well as a UK touring cinema package of her key films and curated BFI Player Subscription collection coinciding with the Chantal Akerman BFI Southbank season.
BFI Blu-ray will also release a two-volume collector’s edition of her work, with Chantal Akerman Collection Volume 1: 1967-1978 released on the 24th of February and Chantal Akerman Collection Volume 2: 1982-2015 due for release on the 16th of June, with many films available for the first time on any format in the UK.
Isabel Stevens, Managing Editor at Sight and Sound and BFI retrospective curator said: “In Chantal Akerman’s first short film, the darkly comic Saute ma ville, she barricades herself in her kitchen and sets about exploding it. That’s exactly what she did to cinema throughout her career: blow it up. Her films about women, domestic spaces, anxiety, loneliness, and displacement, broke the rules of film form and language, fundamentally shifted our concept of what constitutes epic cinema, and, with her mostly female crews, our understanding of who could make films. She always had a surprise up her sleeve. She was a restless, uncompromising experimenter, as comfortable working with melodrama and musicals as she was with minimalism. Her radical feature Jeanne Dielman is only one slice of her story. To adapt a quote from Laura Mulvey, in cinema history, there’s a before and an after Chantal Akerman.”
The Fondation Chantal Akerman at CINEMATEK added: “We at the Chantal Akerman Foundation are very honoured and excited that the BFI will celebrate Chantal Akerman’s work and genius next year by making her films and restorations available (many for the first time) in the UK and Ireland. It’s important to us that Chantal Akerman’s work can continue to touch people around the world, and we thank the BFI for helping to make that happen.”
Chantal Akerman’s singular films smashed the status quo, navigating between genres and between fiction and non-fiction. She showed incredible range, making comedies like Golden Eighties (1986) and A Couch in New York (1996) and literary adaptations including La Captive (2000) and Almayer’s Folly (2011), as well as documentaries, including the trilogy D’Est (1993), South (1999) and From the Other Side (2002). Her work changed perceptions of which subjects and stories were worthy of being filmed, as well as the style in which a film could be made, not to mention who could make them.
Ahead of her time, Akerman’s observations of the everyday, reframing how we look at domestic spaces and women’s experience, her resistance to formal boundaries, what to shoot and how to shoot it, challenging the viewer’s perspective of space and time and subversion of cultural conventions continue to resonate with modern audiences, critics and academics. Reflections that run through her films tap into wider discussions about gender representation and diversity, identity, belonging, feminism, gender, sexuality as well as themes of migration, displacement, exile, memory and generational trauma.
What continues to make Akerman’s films so relevant today is that they are so personal. Akerman made so many films inspired by her own life, like Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (1978), and indeed often turned her camera on herself, acting in her own films such as Je tu il elle (1974), as well as making herself the subject, Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman (1997), the confessional style exploring the artist’s inner world, personality traits and preoccupations with melancholic reflection.
Chantal Akerman joined the Brussels film school (INSAS) in 1967, but immediately left, rejecting the school’s rigid framework. At 18, she made her first short film Saute ma ville (1968) before moving to Paris and then to New York, where she joined the world of underground and experimental film, discovering first-hand the films of Michael Snow, Jonas Mekas, and Andy Warhol. It was also the city in which she made La Chambre (1972), Hôtel Monterey (1972), Hanging Out Yonkers (1973), and News from Home (1976) (now available in a 2K restoration). Returning to Europe she made her first feature film Je tu il elle (1974).
A cornerstone of feminist cinema, her second feature Jeanne Dielman was presented at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 1975, bringing the 24-year-old Akerman international recognition. Whilst a central touchstone for the BFI Southbank retrospective and UK-wide cinema release on 7 February, the BFI celebration offers audiences an opportunity to go beyond Jeanne Dielman and discover more about Akerman’s unwavering and uncompromising radical approach to cinema across her career.
Arranged by theme, the BFI Southbank season will explore Akerman’s filmography via different subjects that were important to her: Self-portraits – making cinema personal and questioning what cinema is and how to make it (Saute ma ville (1968), Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (1978), Les Années 80 (1983), Akerman par Chantal Akerman (1997)); Mothers – Akerman had an intense relationship with her mother, she explored this in both her non-fiction and the recurring motif of mother/daughter relationships in her fiction films (L’enfant aime ou je joue… (1971), Jeanne Dielman (1975), News from Home (1976), No Home Movie (2015)); Exile and Dislocation – exploring identity and belonging (Hôtel Monterey (1972), Le 15/8 (1973), Histoires d’ Amérique: Food, Family and Philosophy (1988)); Romance and desire – including groundbreaking examples of Lesbian sex on screen (Je tu il elle (1974), All Night Long (1982), Golden Eighties (1986), A Couch in New York (1996)); Confinement and Wandering – turning the gaze outwards to explore the situation of immigrants (D’Est (1993), South (1999), From the Other Side (2002), Hanging Out Yonkers (1973)) and Portraits of Artists – including documentaries on Sylvia Plath and Pina Bausch.
These themes help foster a deeper connection with the filmmaker, her interests and preoccupations, and an understanding of her films. From 1995 Akerman created video installations intertwining the worlds of film and contemporary art. Her last film No Home Movie (2015) was completed just before her death.
Akerman’s work has recently been celebrated in Brussels with CINEMATEK’s comprehensive retrospective and curated exhibition at the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts, currently on tour at Jeu de Paume in Paris. An Akerman retrospective at the ICA curated by Joanna Hogg and Adam Roberts as ‘A Nos Amours’ (2013-2015), helped bring more public and critical attention to her work, however, Chantal Akerman’s work has never been widely accessible in the UK until now. A selection of titles including Je tu il elle (1974), News from Home (1976) Golden Eighties (1986), and La Captive (2000) will tour UK cinemas, with partner venues including Ciné Lumière, ICA, and Glasgow Film Theatre.
BFI Blu-ray’s five disc collector’s set, Chantal Akerman Collection: Volume 1 – 1967 – 1978 is released on 24 February and includes, Akerman – Examen d’entree INSAS x 4 (1967), Saute ma ville (1968), L’enfant aime ou je joue… (1971), Hôtel Monterey (1972), La Chambre (1972), Hanging Out Yonkers (1973), Le 15/8 (1973), Je tu il elle (1974), Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), News from Home (1976), Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (1978) + 4 extras: Author of Jeanne Dielman, interviews with Babette Mangolte (cinematographer), Natalia Akerman (Chantal Akerman’s mother) and Aurore Clement (actor).
Chantal Akerman Collection: Volume 2 – 1982 – 2015, released on 16 June, will include All Night Long (1982), Les Années 80 (1983), Golden Eighties (1986), Sloth (in Seven Women, Seven Sins) (1986), Histoires d’ Amérique: Food, Family and Philosophy (1988), D’Est (1993), South (1999), La Captive (2000), From the Other Side (2002), Almayer’s Folly (2011), No Home Movie (2015). In addition, a curated BFI Player Subscription collection will coincide with the Chantal Akerman BFI Southbank season.
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