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’.

Screening as part of 5 by Akerman

Director Chantal Akerman
Year 1975
Duration 3h 42m
Language French with English Subtitles
Cast Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte, Henri Storck