Everyone Has Their Own Life

Seeing, really seeing in daily life, is almost impossible because our minds move too quickly towards thought, to description, to analysis. We’re programmed to see what we want to see and disregard the rest. Faced with witnessing something complex or traumatic we’re more likely to disavow it in the moment so that what’s too overwhelming can shift quickly into memory, filed away to be understood later. For that understanding to take place we need a space of aftermath.

No Home Movie as a document offers a form of aftermath. We, the people watching, can experience it with the safety of hindsight. But safety from what?

Everyone Has Their Own Life is a video essay made in response to Chantal Akerman's 2015 film No Home Movie for the BFI's Chantal Akerman Collection: Volume Two [1982-2015].

Director: Sarah Wood. UK, 11 mins, 2025