Blauer Salon
Winter term 2026
Toute une nuit

A Whole Night

Director: Chantal Akerman | Belgium, France 1982 | 90 min | 35mm | Original version with German subtitles | with Aurore Clément, Natalia Akerman, Paul Allio

Over the course of a warm summer evening and the following night, countless encounters, separations, and reunions unfold across the streets of Brussels.

Dispensing with a central protagonist, Chantal Akerman assembles a mosaic of fleeting relationships in which gestures, glances, and movement largely replace dialogue. Its episodic structure links couples, strangers, and solitary figures into a carefully orchestrated portrait of the city, where longing, desire, and loneliness coexist. Music, ambient sound, and the rhythms of the night assume key narrative functions, while long takes and precise compositions transform everyday actions into a subtle choreography. The film occupies a central place within Akerman's exploration of space, duration, and corporeality, and is widely regarded as a defining example of her minimalist yet emotionally resonant cinema.

Loan of the film print with kind support of Metropolis Archiv - Kinemathek Hamburg.METROPOLIS+_1920_neg