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The stripped-down aesthetic principles, compassionate humanism and naturalistic purity in the films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne make their body of work uncommonly cohesive. It’s easy to be glib about the influential Belgian brothers and say you know exactly what you’re getting with a new Dardenne film — much like their social realist counterpart across the North Sea, Ken Loach, whose films they began helping to produce in 2009. But anticipating the form, the political leanings or broad thematic concerns of a movie is not the same as knowing in advance where it will take you, what kind of marginalized lives it will illuminate.

Ever since their international breakthrough in the 1990s with La Promesse and Rosetta, there’s always been the capacity to surprise in a Dardenne movie. Their latest, Young Mothers (Jeunes Mères), is the filmmakers’ most surprising work in years. It provides unfiltered emotional access to the...

Before turning their attention to ripped-from-reality social justice stories, Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne got their start making short documentaries set in working-class housing projects. They brought that same immersive, observational approach with them to their fiction features, reflected in the long-take handheld camerawork, gritty street-level locations and casting of nonprofessional actors that have become their signature. And yet, it’s doubtful that anyone would have mistaken a Dardenne film for a documentary … until now.

“Young Mothers” is the duo’s most convincing film yet, owing largely to the way they have widened the focus from one or two characters in crisis — the sort of urgency that drove everything from “Rosetta” to “Tori and Lokita” — to a loose choral form. Instead of presenting a single, nail-biting dramatic situation, the Dardennes’ no-less-engaging ensemble drama dedicates quality time to a quartet of young women — girls, really — under the care of a maternal assistance home in Liège.

For nearly 50 years, the Dardenne brothers have been faithfully hoeing the same cinematic row; Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne make films filled entirely with the kinds of people who generally pass beneath notice: people who struggle to manage their lives, who battle addictions, who are born poor and are likely to die poor. They make these films, moreover, mostly where they live, in the Francophone part of Belgium, casting both actors and non-professionals to work alongside each other and cleaving to an unadorned naturalism. It isn’t exactly cinema verité — they find lyricism in the everyday — but they never try to puzzle us with poetry or impress with cinematic flourishes. Their politics are even plainer. The Dardennes stand with the have-nots. They serve them by telling their stories.

Young Mothers focuses on five very young women living temporarily in a shelter for underage mothers. These narrative strands are drawn from their observations of a real shelter,...

Exclusive: Here’s your first trailer for German director Kilian Riedhof’s drama You Will Not Have My Hate based on the true story of a man’s quest to rebuild his life without hatred after his wife was killed in the 2015 Bataclan attack in Paris.

The French-language film will world premiere at the 75th edition of the Locarno Film Festival (August 3-13) in a Piazza Grande screening.

The work is based on the bestselling novel of the same name by French journalist Antoine Leiris, recounting his journey as he rebuilt his life and that of his young son following his wife’s murder alongside 89 other people in a terror attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris on November 13, 2015.

Leiris’s story garnered attention in France and internationally after he posted an open letter on Facebook to his wife’s killers, saying: “On Friday night, you stole the life of an exceptional being,...

The Unknown Girl The Un(La fille inconnue) Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne Written by: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne Cast: Adèle Haenel, Olivier Bonnaud, Jérémie Renier, Louka Minella Christelle Cornil Screened at:Critics’ link, NYC, 9/1/17 Opens: September 8, 2017 At a time that the American people are faced with both threats and exhortations by our president […]

The post The Unknown Girl Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

La Fille inconnue

Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Writers: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

The two-time Palme d’Or winning Belgian duo Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Rosetta; L’Enfant) take our top spot for most anticipated foreign film of 2016. Like their last two features, the directors have cast a well-known actress, Adèle Haenel (recently winning her second Cesar for Love at First Fight) for their latest feature, La Fille inconnue (The Unknown Girl) (Cecile de France centered 2011’s Kid with a Bike while Marion Cotillard mastered 2014’s Two Days, One Night). Haenel stars as a young general practitioner who feels severe guilt about not providing surgery for a young woman who is found dead a short while after. Confirming the girl’s identity is a mystery, the Gp is determined to find out what happened and who she is.

Cast: Adèle Haenel, Jeremie Renier, Thomas Doret, Olivier Gourmet, Fabrizio Rongione, Christelle Cornil

Production Co.

Luca Guadagnino is reuniting with his A Bigger Splash cast—Dakota Johnson, Matthias Schoenaerts, Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton—for a remake of Dario Argento's Suspiria. More news of projects in the works: Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne's La Fille inconnue with Adèle Haenel, Olivier Gourmet and Christelle Cornil; Joachim Lafosse's L’Economie du couple with Bérénice Béjo and Cédric Kahn; Eleanor Coppola's Bonjour Anne with Diane Lane, Alec Baldwin and Arnaud Viard; Maria Schrader's Stefan Zweig biopic with Josef Hader and Barbara Sukowa; Doug Liman's Luna Park with Tom Cruise; Michael R. Roskam’s The Faithful with Adèle Exarchopoulos and Matthias Schoenaerts; and more. » - David Hudson...

Luca Guadagnino is reuniting with his A Bigger Splash cast—Dakota Johnson, Matthias Schoenaerts, Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton—for a remake of Dario Argento's Suspiria. More news of projects in the works: Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne's La Fille inconnue with Adèle Haenel, Olivier Gourmet and Christelle Cornil; Joachim Lafosse's L’Economie du couple with Bérénice Béjo and Cédric Kahn; Eleanor Coppola's Bonjour Anne with Diane Lane, Alec Baldwin and Arnaud Viard; Maria Schrader's Stefan Zweig biopic with Josef Hader and Barbara Sukowa; Doug Liman's Luna Park with Tom Cruise; Michael R. Roskam’s The Faithful with Adèle Exarchopoulos and Matthias Schoenaerts; and more. » - David Hudson...

Kris De Meester’s adaptation of Dostoevsky’s novel Notes From the Underground is currently in post-production.

Udo Kier has joined the cast of Johnny Walker.

Kris De Meester’s adaptation of Dostoevsky’s novel Notes From the Underground is currently in post-production. Kier will play Fyodor, an evil voice in the head of the film’s main character.

The black comedy is produced by De Meester and executive produced by Christine K. Walker.

It also stars Eric Godon, Astrid Whettnall, Mieke Daneels, Hank Botwinik and Christelle Cornil.

The Dardenne brothers have begun shooting their latest film - one of 21 features to receive a major financial boost from Eurimages.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have commenced principal photography on Two Days, One Night (Deux Jours, Une Nuit) in Seraing, Belgium.

For full production details visit

Two Days, One Night (Deux Jours, Une Nuit)

Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard and Fabrizio Rongione play the leads alongside a variety of Belgian actors including Olivier Gourmet, Christelle Cornil and Catherine Salée.

The film follows 30-year old Sandra (Cotillard) and her husband (Rongione) on their hunt across the city for colleagues prepared to sacrifice their bonuses so she can keep her job.

Artificial Eye pre-bought the film for the UK from Wild Bunch, which is handling international sales. Sundance Selects has acquired it for the Us.

This €7m ($9.1m) film will be co-produced by Les Films du Fleuve (Belgium), Archipel (France) and Bim (Italy).

The technical crew will be mainly Belgian, including...