Jeanne Dielman, 1080 Brussels, Kereskedő utca 23. I-II., chose the pioneering work of feminist cinema as the best film of all time by the Belgian director and screenwriter Chantal Akerman, who died in 2015. Sight and Sound, the magazine of the British Film Institute, was announced by the BBC news portal on Friday.
This is the first time that a film by a female director has been at the top of the film list compiled by Sight and Sound every ten years since 1952, which is formed based on the votes of film critics, curators and distributors.
Presented in 1975, Jeanne Dielman is a real-time study of a middle-aged widow who lives with her teenage son in a tiny apartment in Brussels. Akerman shows the woman's daily activities, and in the process it is revealed that she and her son are supported by money earned through occasional prostitution.
The list of the best films of all time compiled by the British Film Institute magazine was headed by Orson Welles' Golden Citizen for forty years until 2012, when the title was taken over by Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.
Jeanne Dielman is not as well known to the general public outside the circle of film critics as the previous list leaders, but it is unanimously considered a true masterpiece, a pioneering work of feminist cinema. Laura Mulvey, professor of film theory at Birkbeck University, said in an article that this year's vote "suddenly shook everything up", and nothing will be the same after that.
Sight and Sound's list of 100 was previously criticized by several people because the range of experts participating in the voting was not diverse enough for a long time. The most recent 2012 list included only two films by female directors and only one creator of color. Over the years, the circle of critics and professionals who are asked for their opinions has expanded, this year already 1,639 cast their votes for the list of the 10 best films of all time.
In the 2022 list, the former list leader, Dédülés, took second place, and Aranypolgár came in third. The voters ranked the classic of the 1950s, Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story, in fourth place, and Hong Kong's Wong Kar-waj's 2000 work Tuned to Love took fifth place.
(Source: marmalade.co.hu; MTI | Image: pixabay.com)