This August, Melbourne International Film Festival 2025 (MIFF 2025) will showcase Chantal Akerman: Traces, a sweeping retrospective of the unique Belgian auteur’s cinematic legacy, featuring 27 films across 13 sessions. Many of the works are newly restored and making their Australian premiere. This comprehensive program celebrates Akerman’s influential career by bringing together her most iconic films and rarely seen gems, from early student shorts and lyrical documentaries to bold experiments in form and moments of sly humour, with a focus on works not screened at MIFF in recent years.
A prolific and endlessly curious artist, Akerman resisted categorisation, instead drawing deeply from her lived experience to shape her films. The program’s title, curated by Senior Programmer Kate Jinx, is inspired by Akerman’s 2013 book Ma mère rit (My Mother Laughs), in which she reflects on the claim that she poured her “whole self” into her work. Her response? “Just traces.”
Explore the full selection of 27 films in the Chantal Akerman retrospective below. And stay tuned for more articles about films from France, the Francophonie and in French at MIFF 2025 over the coming weeks.
Chantal Akerman: Her First Look Behind the Camera / Examen d’entrée INSAS
SHORT FILMS
Director: Chantal Akerman
Belgium
NO DIALOGUE
The beginnings of Akerman’s signature style are captured in these early experimental short films she made at the age of 17. It is comprised of 4 short films.
SCREENS WITH Je tu il elle, and Saute ma ville
Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman
Director: Chantal Akerman
Country: France
Language: French
This auto-portrait made for French TV offers a rare first-person insight into the director’s life and artistic process.
SCREENS WITH Dis-moi
Director: Chantal Akerman
Countries: France, Belgium
NO DIALOGUE
An impressionistic visual survey of a fraying Eastern Europe, Akerman’s documentary traverses time and borders.
SCREENS ALONE
Director: Chantal Akerman
Countries: France, Belgium
Language: French
This playful autobiographical comedy starring Sylvie Testud and Aurore Clément screens in cinema from a 35mm print, and online from a brand new, Australian premiere 4K restoration.
SCREENS ALONE
SHORT FILM
Director: Chantal Akerman
Country: France
Language: French
In an attempt to understand her own lineage, Akerman visits the homes of three women who survived the Holocaust.
SCREENS WITH Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman
SHORT FILM
Director: Chantal Akerman
Country: UK
Language English
The act of filmmaking is gently interrogated in this screwball caper set in Los Angeles.
SCREENS WITH L’Homme à la valise, Lettre de cinéaste, Portrait d’une paresseuse, and Le jour où…
Director: Chantal Akerman
Country: Belgium
NO DIALOGUE
Akerman’s debut feature silently captures a mesmeric night of down-at-heel accommodation in 70s Manhattan.
SCREENS WITH Le 15/8
SHORT FILM
Director: Chantal Akerman
Country: France
Language: French
In this newly 4K-restored gem, two adventurous teenage girls ditch Brussels for the bright lights of Paris with moving results.
SCREENS WITH Portrait d’une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles.
Director: Chantal Akerman
Countries: France, Belgium
Language: French
Akerman plays the central role in her first narrative feature, a frank exploration of both disconnection and intimacy.
SCREENS WITH Saute ma ville, and Chantal Akerman: Her First Look Behind the Camera.
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles
Director: Chantal Akerman
Countries : France, Belgium
Language : French
Voted the greatest film of all time in Sight and Sounds 2022 global poll of film critics, Chantal Akerman’s breakthrough masterpiece is a radically meticulous portrait of domestic disquiet – now restored in 4K.
SCREENS ALONE
Director: Chantal Akerman
Country: France
Language: French
Akerman stars in this droll comedy about a director driven to paranoid hermeticism in her quest for alone time.
SCREENS WITH Family Business, Lettre de cinéaste, Portrait d’une paresseuse, and Le jour où….
SHORT FILM
Director: Chantal Akerman
Country : Belgium
NO DIALOGUE
Akerman creates an intimate still life in fluid form in this influential film that cleverly rearranges time and space.
SCREENS WITH News From Home.
SHORT FILM
Directors: Chantal Akerman, Samy Szlingerbaum
Country : Belgium
Language : English
A young woman’s searching thoughts play out from indoors on a bright summer’s day.
SCREENS WITH Hotel Monterey.
SHORT FILM
Director: Chantal Akerman
Country: Switzerland
Language: French
In a short described as “an homage to Godard” Akerman reflects on the future of cinema
SCREENS WITH L’homme à la valise, Family Business, Lettre de cinéaste, and Portrait d’une paresseuse.
Les Rendez-vous d’Anna/Meetings with Anna
Director: Chantal Akerman
Countries: Germany, France, Belgium
Language: French
Beautifully restored in 4K, Akerman’s feature follow-up to Jeanne Dielman is an introspective portrait of a filmmaker on the road
SCREENS ALONE
Lettre de cinéaste / A Filmmaker’s Letter
SHORT FILM
Director: Chantal Akerman
Country : France
Language : French
“To make movies”, Akerman announces “you have to get up”. Aurore Clément joins the director in a whimsical exploration of what happens next.
SCREENS WITH L’homme à la valise, Family Business, Portrait d’une paresseuse, Le jour où….
Director: Chantal Akerman
Countries: France, Belgium
Language: French
A poetic time capsule of late 70s Manhattan, Akerman’s minimalist film juxtaposes intimate missives from her mother with scenes from her temporary location.
SCREENS WITH La Chambre
Director: Chantal Akerman
Countries: France, Belgium
Language: French
An almost impossibly intimate portrait of her dying mother, Akerman’s final, melancholic film acknowledges her deep connection.
SCREENS ALONE
Director: Chantal Akerman
Country : France
Language: French
Akerman paints a French New Wave portrait of teen anxiety and flirtation in this affectionate, quasi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama.
SCREENS WITH J’ai faim, j’ai froid
Portrait d’une paresseuse/ Portrait of a Lazy Woman
SHORT FILM
Director: Chantal Akerman
Country: Germany
Language: French
In the Seven Women, Seven Sins chapter alternatively titled La Paresse (Sloth), Akerman directs and stars in an ironic meditation on idleness from the perspective of a filmmaker who’d seemingly rather stay in bed.
SCREENS WITH L’homme à la valise, Family Business, Lettre de cinéaste, Le jour où….
SHORT FILM
Director: Chantal Akerman
Country: Belgium
NO DIALOGUE
Mystery, modernism and romance come alive after dark in the 16th arrondissement.
SCREENS WITH Toute une nuit
SHORT FILM
Director: Chantal Akerman
Country: Belgium
Language: French
Akerman’s comedic and incendiary first completed short film – whose title loosely translated as “blow up my town” explodes feminine conventions.
SCREENS WITH Je tu il elle, and Chantal Akerman: Her First Look Behind the Camera.
Director: Chantal Akerman
Countries: France, Belgium
Language: English
A searing study of the effect of a shocking hate crime on the people and landscape of a Texan town.
SCREENS ALONE
Director: Chantal Akerman
Countries: France, Belgium
Language: French
A sense of desire underpins this poetic exploration of a single, sultry night in the city, and the people who occupy it.
SCREENS WITH Rue Mallet-Stevens
KEY INFO FOR CHANTAL AKERMAN: TRACES
WHAT: Chantal Akerman: Traces, a retrospective of Belgian director Chantal Akerman’s films
WHERE: Various cinemas in Melbourne
WHEN: Melbourne International Film Festival runs from 7 to 24 August
HOW: Purchase your tickets to the films via the links above.
HOW MUCH: If you’re planning on seeing more than one film, or even going to one film with a few people, you may find the Multi passes to be good value.
Multipass-3
Full price: $79.80
Concession: $71.90
MIFF Members: $67.90
Multipass-6
Full price: $151.20
Concession: 136.10
MIFF Members $128.60
Multipass-12
Full price: 285.60
Concession: $257.10
MIFF Members $242.80
Festival Passport
A single ticket to every standard session at MIFF 2025. It’s available exclusively as part of a Deluxe Membership. A Deluxe Membership costs $650
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Are you familiar with Chantal Akerman’s works? What’s your favourite film?
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