'Outstanding' Dardenne brothers teenage mothers movie has Cannes in tears

eNCA

25-05-2025

CANNES - Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, whose inspiring new film "Young Mothers" won the best screenplay prize at Cannes on Saturday, said they wanted to show young women defying the fate that was forced on them.
Set at a shelter for underage mothers, it follows five teenagers as they learn to look after their babies with the help of kind nurses and social workers.
The film shows how each of them frees "themselves from a destiny... that has been imposed on them, and the journey they have to go on to free themselves of this fate that has been chasing them since childhood," Jean-Pierre Dardenne told AFP.
The brothers, already two-time Palme d'Or winners, visited a similar shelter as part of research for another film.
"It's really the place that made us decide to make this film," Jean-Pierre Dardenne said before its premiere in Cannes on Friday.
AFP | Miguel MEDINA
"When I say place, it's also the young women, the educators, the psychologist, the director who drew us in, what was happening there, what we felt," he added.
"It's as if the place, these people, said: 'Tell our stories.'"
The film has received rave reviews, and on Friday also won the unofficial Positive Cinema Prize for the most upbeat film in the main competition.
The Guardian newspaper called it "quietly outstanding" and gave it a rare five-star review, while Variety called it "the duo's most convincing film yet".
In the movie, Naima leaves the shelter to start life as a single mother.
But Julie, a former addict, is still struggling to find her feet, while heavily pregnant Jessica is desperately trying to renew ties with the woman who gave her up as a teenager.
Perla and Ariane are striving to become better examples to their babies than their own alcoholic mothers.
- 'Babies just do their thing' -
"They are individual destinies," said Luc Dardenne.
"What we were interested in was to tell the stories of five people going through five different things, even if of course it's always linked to a relationship with a child."
The film "looks at how social history, poverty, the fact that your own mother abandoned you, weighs down on each character... and how to fight this," he said.
AFP | Antonin THUILLIER
The brothers said filming most scenes with real babies had forced them to work differently.
"Babies don't know that they're being filmed. So babies just do their thing," said Luc Dardenne.
"So we said to ourselves that we would try to have one take, just one take, and be happy with it. Sometimes we had to do two takes," he said.
"I must admit that the takes weren't the same thanks to the babies, which gave a different pace to the film."
Asked how they felt about reducing even the most hardened critics to tears at the screening, Jean-Pierre said, "Perhaps it's because one day we were all babies."
- A 'voice to the voiceless' -
The brothers have created their own brand of cinema, telling stories of the poorest and most disadvantaged without pity or pathos.
The Belgians won the first of their Palme d'Ors in 1999 with "Rosetta", starring Emilie Dequenne, one of many extraordinary non-professional actors they discovered.
She died in March, tragically young at 43, after carving out a career as one of the most distinctive faces of French-language film.
AFP | Julie SEBADELHA
The brothers, who began making documentaries in the late 1970s, rarely stray far from their hometown of Liege for their films.
The region has long been plagued with poverty and joblessness, and both say they try to give a "voice to the voiceless".
The authenticity of their stories has long been their trademark, with the latest tender babies-having-babies tale feeling so realistic that many critics said it felt like a documentary.
The Dardennes won their second Palme d'Or in 2005 with "The Child", taking the second prize Grand Prix in 2011 with "The Kid with a Bike", which was nominated for a Golden Globe.
by Raphaelle Peltier and Alice Hackman