Among the greatest films ever made, Chantal Akerman's nearly three-and-a-half-hour masterpiece (not a second overlong) puts a widowed housewife, stuck in a mundane life and made invisible by social order, front and center. In this searing homage to nameless mothers and homemakers everywhere (including her own), Akerman creates the cinematic equivalent of a hypnotic metronome as she meticulously presents Jeanne (Delphine Seyrig) and her checklist of tasks—cooking, cleaning, shopping, parenting and, with a shock, sex work—to make ends meet over the course of three suffocating days. Thanks to Akerman's rhythmic discipline, each of Jeanne's slightly out-of-the-ordinary acts land with a disturbing thud as they grow in number and tip the banal domestic balance, eventually driving her to cold-blooded murder. Groundbreaking in its unblinking, real-time portrayal of unglamorous house chores as a means of validating female frustration, Jeanne Dielman's feminist resonance is cemented in perpetuity.—Tomris Laffly
Little by little, women-driven storytelling is gaining traction in Hollywood. Make no mistake, it’s still a boy’s town. But in the wake of #MeToo, there are signs of cracks appearing in the glass ceiling, from the recent Oscar triumphs of Jane Campion, Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland and the Michelle Yeoh-powered Everything Everywhere All At Once to Greta Gerwig’s subversive take on Barbie.
Here’s the truth, though: while they haven’t always received the recognition they deserve – and have had to put up with tremendous amounts of crap – brilliant women have been involved in movie-making since cinema began. (Shout out to Alice Guy-Blaché.) In compiling our list of the 100 greatest feminist films of all-time, we’ve looked back over a century or so. While these films weren’t all directed by women, they all say something about the female experience in a way that deserves praise and respect – then, now and in our hopefully more equitable future.
Written by Abbey Bender, Cath Clarke, Phil de Semlyen, Tomris Laffly, Helen O'Hara, Joshua Rothkopf & Anna Smith. Produced by Hannah Streck.