Chantal Akerman, Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), 35mm

Recently voted the “greatest film of all time” by the Sight and Sound critics’ poll in 2022, now you get a chance to see for yourself … in the format and the setting in which the film was meant to be seen: the cinema! A singular work in film history, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles meticulously details, with a sense of impending doom, the daily routine of a middle-aged widow (the unforgettable Delphine Seyrig), whose chores include making the beds, cooking dinner for her son, and turning the occasional trick. In its enormous spareness, Akerman’s film seems simple, but it encompasses an entire world. Whether seen as an exacting character study or as one of cinema’s most hypnotic and complete depictions of space and time, Jeanne Dielman is an astonishing, compelling movie experiment, one that has been analyzed and argued over for decades. “By placing so much emphasis on aspects of life and work that other films routinely omit, mystify, or skirt over, Akerman forges a major statement, not only in a feminist context but also in a way that tells us something about the lives we all live”—Jonathan Rosenbaum.

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