Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Winner of the 2022 Sight & Sound Greatest Film of All Time Poll. Introduced by Sight & Sound Managing Editor Isabel Stevens.

Jeanne Dielman, the widowed mother of a teenage son, Sylvain, ekes out a drab, repetitive existence in her tiny Brussels apartment. Jeanne's days are divided between humdrum domestic chores and her job as a sex worker, which keeps her financially afloat.

She seems perfectly resigned to her situation until a series of slight interruptions in her routine leads to unexpected and dramatic changes.

'Akerman’s unwavering and completely luminous adherence to a female perspective (not, that is, via the character, Jeanne Dielman, but embedded in the film itself and its director’s vision) combined with her uncompromising and completely coherent cinema to produce a film that was both feminist and cinematically radical' - Laura Mulvey, Sight & Sound 

Isabel Stevens is Managing Editor of the film magazine Sight & Sound, published by the BFI. She commissions features and the front section of the magazine and writes for S&S regularly, including a monthly column on nature and film. She is based in Lewes.