Akerman’s ambiguous triptych was based on her experiences hitchhiking from Paris to Brussels. A woman (played by the filmmaker) holes up in a room, obsessively eating sugar and rearranging furniture. Then we follow her hunt for love and connection – first with a truck driver, then an ex-lover.

With its uninterrupted erotic-free ten-minute lesbian sex scene, this is one of the most radical and assured sequences in any feature debut from the 1970s.

This May, QFT celebrates one of cinema's mavericks with a season dedicated to filmmaker Chantal Akerman, the first female director to take the number one spot on Sight & Sound's Greatest Films of All Time poll.