Assistive Technologies

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Runtime
3hrs 22mins
Directed by
Chantal Akerman
Featuring
Delphine Seyrig,
Jan Decorte,
Henri Storck
Film Language
in French with English subtitles
Body

Chantal Akerman’s classic drama, recently named the greatest film of all time in Sight and Sound's 2022 poll.

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 as 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. - Criterion

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