Every ten years the British Film Institute’s (BFI) in-house magazine, Sight and Sound, polls a large number of critics and film-writers to produce a list of the greatest films of all time.
The number one slot is usually given to a predictable, established classic like Citizen Kane (five times) or Hitchcock’s Vertigo. But in a welcome surprise, 2022’s poll was topped instead by a three-and-a-half-hour Belgian film, directed by a woman. Chantal Akerman’s 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, follows in obsessive (some would say excruciating) detail, the gestures and rituals of a housewife and single mother, the eponymous Jeanne Dielman.
Jeanne Dielman did not come completely out of nowhere to win – it placed 36th in 2012 and 73rd in 2002. In 2002, it was the only film directed by a woman to feature. Thankfully, this year there are 11 in the top 100. Ten years earlier it was the only female-directed film to receive any votes at all.
