Brothers with a Movie Camera: The Cinema of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

ABOUT THE SERIES:

The American Cinematheque is proud to welcome two time Palme d’or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne to our complete feature film retrospective including some of the most influential films of the 21st century. The brothers Dardenne joins us to discuss seven of their feature films, including L’ENFANT, ROSETTA, THE PROMISE, THE SON, THE KID WITH A BIKE, LORNA’S SILENCE and their new critically acclaimed film and winner of the 75th Anniversary Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival TORI AND LOKITA.

Born three years apart in Belgium, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne founded their own production company, Dérives, for a series of politically engaged documentary films. Taking what they learned from documentary filmmaking and experimental theatre the brothers would go on to create feature films with the same level of raw power, immediacy, and minimal narratives that deliver a devastating cinematic social consciousness with their production company Les Films du Fleuve.

They made their first full-length film, FALSCH, in 1987; it was an adaptation of a theatre play concerning the last surviving member of a Jewish family exterminated by the Nazis. The film would mark a major turning point in their career as their first fictional work.

In 1992 they directed I’M THINKING OF YOU, but would have to wait until 1996 before receiving wider recognition at the Directors Fortnight in Cannes with THE PROMISE.  They received their first Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for ROSETTA in 1999.  Three years later Olivier Gourmet received the Festival’s Best Actor award for his role in THE SON. In 2005 the brothers received another Palme d’Or for L’ENFANT, thus joining the very exclusive club of filmmakers to have won the Palme d’Or on two occasions.  Furthermore at Cannes, they would also receive the 2008 Best Screenplay award for LORNA’S SILENCE, a drama about clandestine immigrants; and the 2011 Grand Prix award for THE KID WITH A BIKE.

After this they went on to make TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT with the actress Marion Cotillard and THE UNKNOWN GIRL with Adèle Haenel, and in 2019 they received the Cannes Film Festival’s Best Director award for YOUNG AHMED.

Winner of the 75th Anniversary Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, TORI AND LOKITA, the latest humanist drama from the Dardenne Brothers is a heart stopping thriller that casts an unflinching eye on the trials of the young and dispossessed. Set in Belgium, seventeen-year-old Lokita and twelve-year-old Tori, two immigrants from Benin and Cameroon, respectively struggle to survive on the margins of society. The inseparable pair work as performers in a cheap trattoria, dealing drugs on the side for the restaurant’s abusive cook, while balancing the demands of an indifferent bureaucracy and a band of violent smugglers. When Lokita is held captive while working in a marijuana grow house, Tori scrambles to save his companion from their abusers, as events spiral out of control.