Every 10 years Sight and Sound conducts a widely regarded poll that asks critics to name the greatest films of all time. In 2022, over 1,600 film world experts weighed in and named Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles by Chantal Akerman the #1 film of all time – the first time ever the poll has been topped by a film directed by a woman.
About the film
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 turning the occasional trick. In its enormous spareness, Akerman’s film seems simple, but it encompasses an entire world. 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.