The Greatest Movie Ever Made is coming to cinemas

When Sandal Ackerman brought to life the everyday life of a housewife with an intensity of detail that makes suspenseful thrillers feel like a walk in the park, you might not have imagined that in the year 2023 (nearly 50 years after the shooting) her film would spark so much reaction and discussion among members of the cinephile community.

Jean Dillmann was named the best film of all time in Sight & Sound’s prestigious poll of 1,600 critics from around the world – a once-in-a-decade list so significant that it has formed the basis for the reputation of films like Citizen Kane. Or Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” is the best of all. Both were number one on the list before Jean Dillmann got there.

Of course, as would happen anyway with such a high-profile stake (all the more so because the film is directed by a female who doesn’t quite reach the aforementioned reputation, while it comes to the everyday life of a housewife), some of the reaction wasn’t exactly benevolent.

But through all the feedback and discussion, there is an undeniable positive to this development: a film of great importance has found its way to a much larger audience than it was ever known for, giving many people the chance to get to know it for the first time. film, but also its creator.

At just 25, Ackerman recounts the daily life of a woman who cleans, cooks, helps her teenage son with his homework, tidies up, and goes to bed in an uninterrupted, repetitive routine. In the absence of her son, the woman is confined to her bedroom. However, the director does not focus on her sexual encounters, but on the monotonous, almost ritual daily life of her heroine, and even with little dialogue.

It is a cinematic experience that aims to transcend the boundaries of spectacle and become an experience. The result was an iconic feminist film with a shocking ending, a landmark feminist film starring Delphine Sering (“Last Year in Marienbad”), in a one-woman show.

“Jean Dillmann”, according to legendary director Luc Dardenne, “showed that time, even the substance of cinema itself, can be the time of a man’s daily life, and showed that a man can be a woman. Two simple but supreme discoveries mark a new era in cinema” .

Ackerman herself said in 1975 that “cinema presents the image of women from a man’s point of view, and this is completely wrong.” Fortunately, Jean Dillmann’s cinematic truth lives on – stronger than ever, today, in the year 2023.

And now, it will return to cinemas from Thursday, June 29, exclusively at Carmen Cinemas, in a digitally restored version. tickets You can secure it here.