#dardennes

The first poster for the Dardennes’ Young Ahmed, which follows a radicalized Muslim teenager. 

We learn every day. At every age.

The action takes place in Liège where the fourteen-year-old Igor (Jérémie Renier) assists his greedy father and master Roger (Olivier Gourmet) in the illegal trafficking of clandestine labor. Things get worse after he betrays the man to keep the promise she made to the wife of an African irregular worker who died after falling from scaffolding.

The movie is an intense and impressive coming-of-age film that the two Belgian directors' strong sensibility for documentary (they have made about forty films) "protects" from any spectacular mechanism. In a Rossellini-esque spirit, the camera investigates and shows reality, unleashing drama and awareness through the bodies, objects, and actions of the characters, allowing the simple and crude "materiality" of situations to be symbolically transfigured by the sheer force of images. With so much "truth TV" distorted by the false imperatives of communication, an in-depth look that feels like a breath of fresh air after prolonged visual pollution: beneficial, but almost shocking in its purity.

r.m.

Dardennes Valley by Toulon, Provence region of France