• 8626 Sat, 09 Aug 2025 14:00:00 @ The Capitol

Director: Chantal Akerman
Producer: Evelyne Paul,Alain Gratious,Marilyn Watelet
Screenwriter: Chantal Akerman
Cinematographer: Babette Mangolte
Editor: Patricia Canino
Production Designer: Philippe Graff
Key Cast: Delphine Seyrig,Yves Bical,Jan Decorte,Henri Storck,Jacques Doniol-Valcroze

Voted the greatest film of all time in Sight and Sound’s 2022 global poll of film critics, Chantal Akerman’s breakthrough masterpiece is a radically meticulous portrait of domestic disquiet – now restored in 4K.

Across the course of three hours and 21 minutes, the camera tracks the movements of widowed Belgian mother Jeanne (a riveting Delphine Seyrig, Golden Eighties, MIFF 2023) as she goes about her daily life over three days in her small Brussels apartment. Captured in immersive, lengthy takes, Jeanne prepares meals for herself and her teenage son, gathers groceries, tidies, and bathes. Amid these routine chores, Jeanne undertakes sex work from her own bedroom, greeting a different male client each afternoon. Over time, a subtle change occurs, and an air of unease creeps in, portentously destabilising her otherwise orderly environment.

Simultaneously one of the most revered and debated films in history, Chantal Akerman’s hypnotically epic feature – which debuted 50 years ago at Cannes – is a singular work of cinema, one she made at just 24 years of age. Heralded on release as “the first masterpiece in the feminine in the history of cinema”, its influence is peerless, cited by directors such as Céline Sciamma, Todd Haynes and Gus Van Sant. Shot at Akerman’s own eye-level, together with cinematographer and frequent collaborator Babette Mangolte and, pointedly, a nearly all-female crew, this rigorously composed film about so-called women’s work and unspoken trauma disrupted the artform forever.

“One of the key artworks of the 20th century … A movie to be experienced as much as watched, Jeanne Dielman is a majestic synthesis of formalism and feminism, documentary recording and dramatic acting, precise visuals and orchestrated noise.” – The New York Times

4K Restoration. Restored in 2014 by the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique (CINEMATEK), under supervision of Chantal Akerman, with the support of the Fonds InBev-Baillet Latour.