Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Chantal Akerman’s opus has been voted the greatest film of all time and is arguably the greatest film about time. A ‘love film’ for Akerman’s mother – a Holocaust survivor who could never discuss her past with her daughter – and a revolution in 201 minutes. A film about women’s overlooked everyday lives (‘the lowest in the hierarchy of film images,’ Akeman noted). A film that upends epic cinema. A film about a housewife obsessed with her daily routine in order to suppress anxiety. A film about psychology but with little emotion. A film made with a mostly female crew that transformed European art cinema’s most glamorous star, Delphine Seyrig, into a seemingly unremarkable single mother. But above all, a revolutionary film due to Akerman’s treatment of time and space. To watch Jeanne Dielman is to submit to Akerman’s unrelenting gaze and to be trapped with Jeanne: ‘to have the physical experience of time unfolding inside you, of time entering you’.

Isabel Stevens, Chantal Akerman season curator

A BFI National Archive print. New 35mm made with funding from the National Lottery.

See other screenings of Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce.

See our Chantal Akerman season.

See the Library’s Collection Focus on Chantal Akerman.

Also available on BFI Player