Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Three hours of chores. A lifetime of despair. Chantal Akerman’s landmark masterpiece transforms domestic routine into one of cinema’s most unforgettable descents into alienation and collapse.

Over the course of three meticulously observed days, widowed housewife Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) cooks, cleans, shops, and receives clients in the Brussels apartment that contains her tightly ordered life. But as the smallest disruptions begin to accumulate, routine gives way to anxiety, and control slowly starts to fracture. Named the greatest film of all time in the 2022 Sight and Sound poll, Chantal Akerman’s radical 1975 masterpiece remains both a monumental work of feminist cinema and a quietly devastating study of repression, loneliness, and the terror of a life reduced to function.

Part of Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair, a global series presented in partnership with the American Cinematheque.