Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

A film about three days and one woman's routine. Jeanne lives in a Brussels apartment with her son. Her husband is dead. Her day is fixed to the minute: making the bed, peeling potatoes, going out to shop, preparing dinner, waiting for her son. To make a living she takes a man in during the afternoon, and that too is part of the schedule. The film shows the schedule close to real time. The potatoes are peeled from beginning to end, the dishes washed from beginning to end, the lights switched on and off. The camera is fixed; the scenes are not cut. On the second day something small goes wrong. Then something else. What breaks, in order, builds the entire tension of the film, and the viewer only notices because the routine has been watched for so long. The narrative explains nothing. Jeanne barely speaks and what she thinks is never stated. It runs three hours and twenty minutes. Delphine Seyrig plays Jeanne. Chantal Akerman directed; she made it at twenty-five. In 2022 it was voted the best film of all time in an international critics' poll, a result argued about at length. One of the most important works in cinema for anyone who likes experimental film and formal radicalism. For an impatient viewer, it really is very long and almost nothing happens.