The Meetings of Anna · reception & legacy
1978 · Chantal Akerman
How The Meetings of Anna has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Released in the shadow of Jeanne Dielman and met with a muted, somewhat baffled reception, it spent decades as 'the other Akerman' — but restorations and the post-2015 Akerman revival have pushed it up to near-masterpiece status, with many now calling it her most personal film.
What's debated
The perennial cinephile debate: is this actually better than Jeanne Dielman — Akerman's true masterpiece hiding in plain sight — or is it too glacial even by her standards?
Its footprint
Its images of empty hotel rooms, train corridors and fluorescent European non-places have become shorthand for a whole mood of modern alienation — the aesthetic ancestor of a thousand 'lonely woman in transit' films and Letterboxd lists about beautiful emptiness.
Where it stands
A canon climber and Akerman-devotee favourite — the deep cut you cite to prove you've gone past Jeanne Dielman.