Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

The fifth of this month marked eleven years since Chantal Akerman died in Paris, aged sixty-five. Born in Brussels in 1950 to Polish-Jewish parents who had survived Nazi Germany, she skipped school as a teenager to watch films; at fifteen she saw Godard's Pierrot le fou, the film she said made her want to become a filmmaker — and Godard's Breathless has been on this site since 29 September.

Eleven years on, her most important film is also the one whose reputation has moved furthest. In December 2022 Sight & Sound's decennial critics' poll placed Jeanne Dielman first: only the fourth film ever to top that list, after Bicycle Thieves, Citizen Kane and Vertigo, and the first directed by a woman. Bicycle Thieves, the poll's original winner, has been here since 26 September.

She never claimed the label 'women's cinema' — 'I don't think woman's cinema exists' — but she called this one 'a love film for my mother. It gives recognition to that kind of woman.'

Both of tonight's films watch a woman doing housework in someone else's home. One films it as a prison, the other as a way of knowing the world.

布鲁塞尔，一间普通公寓。让娜·迪尔曼是寡妇，和十几岁的儿子西尔万同住。她的三天被切成精确的刻度：起床、煮咖啡、削土豆、擦皮鞋、买菜、收拾厨房、替儿子熨衬衫。每天下午会有一个男人上门，短暂、沉默、按次付费；事后她把钱放进餐桌上的汤碗里。

镜头几乎不动，也不靠近。它只是把每一件事完整地看完——包括那些在任何一部别的电影里都会被剪掉的四分钟。

When it premiered in the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes in May 1975 it was widely received as a boring exercise in minimalism; France did not release it until January 1976, to polarized reviews, and the United States did not see it until 1983.

Half a century later the verdict has reversed. Rotten Tomatoes records 95% positive from 64 reviews, averaging 9/10; Metacritic's weighted score is 94. It placed 19th in The Village Voice's 2000 poll of the best films of the 20th century, 35th in Sight & Sound's 2012 critics' poll, and first in 2022.

It is now treated as an origin point of slow cinema and a key text of feminist film — though Akerman rejected the label. Louis Marcorelles, writing in Le Monde in 1976, called it 'the first masterpiece of the feminine in the history of cinema'. Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant and Céline Sciamma have all cited it; Van Sant named it an inspiration for Gerry and Elephant.