Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

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—whose chores include making the beds, cooking dinner for her son, and welcoming gentlemen callers for sex to help make ends meet. Whether seen as an exacting character study or 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. One of the great cinema verité films of late twentieth-centry, this fastidiously deadpan film, made by a 25-year-old Akerman and an all female crew, is unblinkingly beautiful and utterly devastating in its depiction of the woman’s work: in the kitchen and in the bedroom. The film was named the "Greatest Film of All Time" on the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound list and screens in a 35mm print, courtesy of Janus Pictures.

film website: www.janusfilms.com/films/1046

In French with English subtitles