Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du commerce,1080 Bruxelles

Director: Chantal Akerman

1975 / 202min / 35mm

The late Chantal Akerman was only 24-years-old when she and her nearly all-female crew made the 1975 masterpiece, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Over the course of three days—and a three-hour movie spell—a woman’s (Delphine Seyrig) life is not just captured, but articulated, and not with big dramatic turns, but with the repetitive, near-tedious yet hypnotically compelling natural rhythms and gestures of her every day—an every day so often devalued. She cooks and cleans, eats and bathes. Akerman’s hyper-attention to detail tells an otherwise small story, and yet, the effect is nothing short of pure, compulsively watchable spectacle.