News from Home (1976)

Dear Mum, Still Alienated - News from Home review by griggs

New York never speaks directly, but it’s always talking. Chantal Akerman films its streets, subways, and sidewalks with the same distance and precision she applies to herself. The city looms indifferent yet full of restless motion—much like Akerman, whose presence reaches us only through her flat reading of her mother’s letters from Belgium.

The contrast is deliberate: a bustling metropolis against the quiet persistence of maternal concern. The letters plead, cajole, and scold in their ordinary way, while the camera lingers on strangers, cars, and endless blocks. It’s as if the city were Akerman’s reply—wordless, impersonal, impossible to explain to those back home.

Like New York—easy to live in but hard to call home—News from Home insists on its own terms. Akerman films the city’s streets, subways, and sidewalks in long, patient takes while flatly reading her mother’s letters from Belgium. Slow and demanding, but it coheres into a portrait of distance, exile, and a young woman measuring herself against the city’s scale.