Chantal Akerman

My grandparents were very well-educated people, but in the Jewish tradition. They knew everything about the Bible. And then they had to come to Brussels, to run away from Poland, because there was too much anti-Semitism. They lost everything they had.

I never felt that I belonged. When I was at school... First I went to a Jewish school, when I was very little. But when I was 12, they put me in a school with a lot of traditions, and they were educated people and they were talking about Greece and the Parthenon and I don't know what.

My daughter Gabby very kindly once said that she thinks I was a better mother because I was doing a job I loved. I now think guilt is a universal part of being a mother. I used to think it was Jewish-mother guilt but now I think it is working-mother guilt.