• 9037 Wed, 20 Aug 2025 18:30:00 @ Kino 2

Director: Chantal Akerman
Screenwriter: Chantal Akerman
Key Cast: Chantal Akerman,Jeffrey Kime

Akerman stars in this droll comedy about a director driven to paranoid hermeticism in her quest for alone time.

In this near-wordless, absurdist comedy, a filmmaker (Chantal Akerman) is unable to concentrate on the screenplay she needs to complete. Taking up too much room in her flat is Henri (Jeffrey Kime), a tall stranger who has unknowingly outstayed his welcome, his belongings strewn down the hall. Akerman’s protagonist (credited only as “La femme”) becomes increasingly irritated by the smallest details of his presence, and downsizes her own space – ultimately barricading herself in her bedroom, where she sets up both surveillance devices and a camping stove.

Originally made for French television, L’Homme à la valise is a sadly underseen film of Akerman’s, as sharp as any of her more celebrated cinematic works. Shooting in her own Paris flat, Akerman – who wrote, directed, and starred – presses against the traumatic intergenerational through-line of captivity and enclosed spaces that haunts much of her work, while also wryly lampooning her own anxious need for solitude.

“We have become accustomed to seeing her act out, indoors. A naturalistic, unfussy presence on screen, here Akerman becomes increasingly, and deliberately Chaplinesque in her plight.” – Sight and Sound

2K Restoration. Restored by the Institut national de l'audiovisuel.