Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels

Few movies have left such a bold impression on the history of film as legendary director Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman. Its simple plot portrays the daily routine of a housewife who struggles to maintain the fragile tapestry of her life in the face of existential pressures. She lives with her son and goes through the motions of her days cleaning, cooking, and hosting men seeking sex-for-pay. The stationary camera and prolonged shots constitute a cinematic study of modern life’s monotony and the emotional repression it involves. Above all, the film explores the price “femininity” pays when bound to bourgeois European norms, cementing its status as “the first masterpiece in the feminist history of film” (Le Monde).