Demain on déménage (Drama)
Director: Chantal Akerman
Producer: Paulo Branco,Marilyn Watelet
Screenwriter: Chantal Akerman,Eric de Kuyper
Cinematographer: Sabine Lancelin
Composer: Sonia Wieder Atherton
Editor: Claire Atherton
Production Designer: Antoine Beau
Costume Designer: Nathalie du Roscoät
Key Cast: Jean-Pierre Marielle,Dominique Reymond,Gilles Privat,Lucas Belvaux,Natasha Regnier,Elsa Zylberstein,Aurore Clement,Sylvie Testud
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.
Aurore Clément (a frequent collaborator of Chantal Akerman’s who previously appeared in Les rendez-vous d’Anna, Toute une nuit and Lettre d’une cinéaste, and also features in A Private Life, MIFF 2025) stars as Catherine, a blustery widow who has moved in with her adult daughter Charlotte (Sylvie Testud, Lourdes, MIFF 2010), a writer commissioned to pen an erotic novel. Almost instantly, they begin to look for a new place to live, with Charlotte renting her own separate studio in order to write and Catherine occupying ever more space with her plans of becoming a piano teacher. But putting their duplex up for sale only invites more chaos, as potential buyers appear, and, through a farcical sequence of events, fail to leave.
Akerman may often be thought of as a rigorously avant-garde director, but there is much humour to be found in her work – even in the exacting banality of some of her more experimental films. With the playfulness of her musical Golden Eighties (MIFF 2023) and the director’s Chaplin-esque L’Homme à la valise (along with comedic shorts Family Business and La Paresse, grouped together with the latter in this retrospective), this underappreciated film lends a screwball energy to a story that echoes Akerman’s own deeply rooted relationship with her mother. Co-written with Eric de Kuyper, Demain on déménage won the Lumière Award for Best French-Language Film in 2005.
“Silly and sweet, full of Godardian syllogisms and charming set pieces … Above all, the film is a love letter to women.” – Sight and Sound
In Cinema: 35mm print provided by The Bureau Sales.
Online: 4K restoration. Restored in 4K by the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique (CINEMATEK) and Fondation Chantal Akerman in collaboration with The Bureau Sales.