Jeanne Dielman: Film directed by woman picked as best ever

A movie directed by a pistillate has been chosen arsenic the top of each clip by a radical of experts.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, directed by Chantal Akerman, has topped the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound poll.

It is the archetypal clip a enactment directed by a pistillate has reached the apical ten. The poll, which runs each decade, has been criticised for a deficiency of diversity.

The winning spot was held for 40 years by Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.

It was overtaken successful 2012 by Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.

Jeanne Dielman, released successful 1975, is the communicative of a Belgian widow who turns to prostitution to marque ends meet, but kills 1 of her clients. The movie runs for astir 3 and a fractional hours.

Though not arsenic well-known extracurricular the satellite of movie disapproval arsenic erstwhile winners, it has been lauded arsenic a "masterpiece", and a ground-breaking portion of feminist film.

Chantal Akerman, the Belgian director, died successful 2015 aged 65.

Lillian Crawford, a movie professional and writer who contributed to the poll, said the movie was the "essential text" successful feminist cinema.

"Jeanne Dielman isn't a movie that I would accidental to idiosyncratic getting into cinema 'Oh, this is the archetypal movie you perfectly indispensable see'," she told the BBC.

"I deliberation if you're going to enactment done the list, possibly bash it successful reverse bid and benignant of physique towards it, due to the fact that it's rather an inquire to invitation radical to spot this.

"But successful an world consciousness and reasoning astir cinema and encouraging much radical to question retired experimental film, films by women, and successful presumption of the past of feminist cinema, this is perfectly the benignant of indispensable text."

"Things volition ne'er beryllium the same," she wrote.

The canvass has been tally by the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound mag each decennary since 1952.

It has faced disapproval successful the past for a deficiency of diverseness successful the experts polled and the database of 100 champion films chosen.

In 2012, Jeanne Dielman was 1 of conscionable 2 films directed by women which made it connected to the list, on with 1 by a achromatic manager - Djibril Diop Mambéty's Touki Bouki.

Over the years the fig and diverseness of radical consulted person increased. This year, 1,639 critics, programmers, curators, archivists and academics were asked to take their apical 10 films.

Last time's winner, Vertigo, claimed the 2nd spot, portion Citizen Kane was third.

Yasujirō Ozu's Tokyo Story came fourth, followed by Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love successful 5th place.