Sep 27, 2026 · 11 min · 4 segments
This is an audio version of post 47 of *A Sentimental Journey* (Book Ten. Brussels. Part Three. Chantal Akerman) narrated by the author. Illustration by Danny Hellman. Get full access to Turfwall at…
Her mother, Natalia Ackermann, who died at 86 in April 2014, survived the Auschwitz concentration camp where her parents had been killed.
Her father survived the war hidden in a small Brussels apartment.
Questions of displaced memory and indirect Jewish identity raised by Finkelkraut lie at the core of Chantal Ackermann's 1996 film, Dest, from the East.
Ackermann's death approaches this historical chasm in a particularly striking way, attempting to reach across this divide while simultaneously conceding the futility of the gesture, le beau.
In Une Famille à Bruxelles, published in 1998, Chantal Ackermann, alternating between her own voice and that of her mother, imagined her mother's thoughts about her husband, his illness and death, her two daughters, Chantal and her younger sister, Sylviane, who lives with her husband and two young children in Mexico, and her mother's extended family in Belgium.
In Ma Marie, published in 2013, Ackerman sets alongside the trajectory of the serious illness and recovery of her mother, the traumatic and ultimately violent collapse of her relationship with a younger English woman named C. Ackerman was a prolific filmmaker, directing 42 films, ranging from arthouse and experimental films, such as L'Homme à la Ville Lise, 1983, in 1982, to commercial projects such as La Captive, 2000, based on Marcel Proust's novel La Prisonnière, and Almeyer's Folly, 2011, based on Joseph Conrad's first novel.
Her mother, Natalia Ackermann, who died at 86 in April 2014, survived the Auschwitz concentration camp where her parents had been killed.
Her father survived the war hidden in a small Brussels apartment.
Questions of displaced memory and indirect Jewish identity raised by Finkelkraut lie at the core of Chantal Ackermann's 1996 film, Dest, from the East.
Ackermann's death approaches this historical chasm in a particularly striking way, attempting to reach across this divide while simultaneously conceding the futility of the gesture, le beau.
In Une Famille à Bruxelles, published in 1998, Chantal Ackermann, alternating between her own voice and that of her mother, imagined her mother's thoughts about her husband, his illness and death, her two daughters, Chantal and her younger sister, Sylviane, who lives with her husband and two young children in Mexico, and her mother's extended family in Belgium.
In Ma Marie, published in 2013, Ackerman sets alongside the trajectory of the serious illness and recovery of her mother, the traumatic and ultimately violent collapse of her relationship with a younger English woman named C. Ackerman was a prolific filmmaker, directing 42 films, ranging from arthouse and experimental films, such as L'Homme à la Ville Lise, 1983, in 1982, to commercial projects such as La Captive, 2000, based on Marcel Proust's novel La Prisonnière, and Almeyer's Folly, 2011, based on Joseph Conrad's first novel.
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