Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Written and directed by Chantal Akerman, the 1975 French-Belgian production Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles stars Delphine Seyrig. Running nearly three and a half hours, the film portrays three days in the life of a widowed woman living in Brussels with her teenage son, using long takes and a static camera to show household chores almost in real time. Alongside her ritualized cooking and cleaning, she receives male clients by appointment at home to make ends meet; on the third day her impeccable routine begins to unravel and her life changes dramatically.

Shot over five weeks in Brussels, the film premiered in the Directors' Fortnight section of the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. Regarded as a landmark of feminist cinema and an early example of slow cinema, it was voted the greatest film of all time in the 2022 critics' poll conducted by Sight and Sound, the magazine of the British Film Institute, becoming the first film directed by a woman to top that list.