• 8971 Sun, 10 Aug 2025 18:45:00 @ Kino 1

Director: Chantal Akerman
Producer: Paradise Films
Screenwriter: Chantal Akerman
Cinematographer: Bénédicte Delesalle
Editor: Luc Freché
Key Cast: Claire Wauthion,Niels Arestrup,Chantal Akerman

Akerman plays the central role in her first narrative feature, a frank exploration of both disconnection and intimacy.

Hailed by critic and queer film academic B. Ruby Rich as the “cinematic Rosetta Stone of female sexuality”, Je tu il elle is a film in three parts, all of which feature Chantal Akerman (who also wrote and directed) as Julie, a young woman adrift. In the first section, she spends time alone in a squalid little bedroom, obsessing over a letter while compulsively eating powdered sugar from a bag; in the second, she hitchhikes and has a sexual encounter with an indifferent truck driver (Niels Arestrup); and in the third, she returns to the home of her ex-girlfriend (Claire Wauthion), who provides a meal before they take to bed.

Je tu il elle has been profoundly influential, its radical vision being cited by many (particularly queer) filmmakers as having inspired their own work. There has been much discourse given to the film’s graphic final 10-minute act – from critiques about a lack of male-gaze eroticism to the celebration of its frank authenticity – but it remains an astonishing scene more than four decades on: a portrayal of non-performative lesbian sex in real time.

“Mythical … The transparency that the film has in terms of sex and sexuality is wonderful, and it’s like a beacon for me in terms of what is possible.” – Director Ira Sachs

2K Restoration. Restored in 2015 by the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique (CINEMATEK) with the support of the Fonds InBev-Baillet Latour.