• 9017 Mon, 11 Aug 2025 20:45:00 @ Kino 2

Director: Chantal Akerman
Producer: Nicole Flipo,Marilyn Watelet
Screenwriter: Chantal Akerman
Cinematographer: Caroline Champetier
Editor: Luc Barnier
Production Designer: Michèle Blondel
Costume Designer: Michèle Blondel
Key Cast: Aurore Clément,Tchéky Karyo,Angelo Abazoglou

A sense of desire underpins this poetic exploration of a single, sultry night in the city, and of the people who occupy it.

It’s a hot summer evening in Brussels, and across the streets and within the buildings that dot this metropolis, the locals are yearning – looking for connection, or simply a distraction from their own malaise. Lovers, neighbours and strangers encounter one another over a kaleidoscopic series of unconnected vignettes set between the darkness of night, the optimism of dawn and the cold realities of the morning that follows. The dialogue between the many unnamed characters (one of whom is played by Les rendez-vous d’Anna’s Aurore Clément) is pared back, allowing their stories to be told through movement and small gestures.

Shot by celebrated cinematographer Caroline Champetier (Annette, MIFF 2021) in the early stages of her career, this moody, Edward Hopper-esque melodrama was her only collaboration with Akerman; she would go on to lens films by Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard and Leos Carax. Recently restored in 2K, Tout une nuit was officially selected at the time of its production to screen at the Venice, Berlin, Locarno and Toronto film festivals.

“A masterwork … as thoroughly designed in its sensuous details as in its visual and dramatic schemas … Toute une nuit is [Akerman’s] most exquisite, most compressed, most refined, and most intricate film.” – The New Yorker

2K Restoration. Restored in 2022 by Cinémathèque royale de Belgique (CINEMATEK), with the support of Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles and the Région de Bruxelles-Capitale, under the supervision of the director of photography, Caroline Champetier, and Frédéric Savoir (Amazing Digital Studios).