Epp Kotkas

Impersonal and beautiful images of Akerman's life in New York are combined with letters from her loving but manipulative mother, read by Akerman herself.

Rainer’s landmark film is a meditation on ambivalence that plays with cliché and the conventions of soap opera while telling the story of a woman whose sexual dissatisfaction masks an enormous anger.

The film is about looking. I bet that slight variations of few recurrent elements would encourage the viewer to free associate and to fantasize a kind of narrative. - BM

In this recently rediscovered home movie, three women—Chantal Akerman, Babette Mangolte, and Epp Kotkas—share a precious moment of laughter and friendship while filming Hotel Monterey in 1972 in New York.