A woman cooks. A woman cleans. A woman runs errands. A woman takes care of her son. A woman sleeps. A woman wakes. Repeat the cycle. Chantal Akerman’s masterpiece unspools over three-and-a-half hours, turning the mundanity and boredom of life’s daily rhythms into an investigation of womanhood, stasis, tragedy and order, with Delphine Seyrig in the titular role - a performance of near-perfect stillness.

Focusing almost exclusively on Jeanne Dielman’s day-to-day existence, punctuated by the visit of clients for sex work before her son returns from school, the film’s slow, methodical pacing produces a hypnotising effect that draws the viewer in. It’s an effect most keenly felt in the space of a cinema.

Enshrined by critics and scholars as the Greatest Film of All Time in the 2022 edition of Sight & Sound’s famed decennial poll, and the first film directed by a woman to be given that accolade, Jeanne Dielman stands as a distinctly modernist masterpiece, as much influenced by experimental Structural cinema as by neorealist drama. Find out where it stands in your pantheon of greats.

Presented in Collaboration with Sight & Sound and restoration thanks to CINEMATEK, Belgium.

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