Reflecting Realism – Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne Retrospective

The Belgian Dardenne brothers certainly rank among the most important contemporary filmmakers. With their five feature films LA PROMESSE, ROSETTA, LE FILS, L’ENFANT, and LE SILENCE DE LORNA they have introduced a unique realistic aesthetic into European narrative cinema, drawing precise social portrayals without performing simple social criticism. The roots of their artistic style are of a documentary nature: As “video pioneers”, the two shot politically committed documentaries in and around their hometown Seraing in the 1970s and 80s. We will present these early works that are hardly known here for the first time in Germany within the frame of the Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne retrospective. We will also screen the two feature films that they produced during their transition phase to fiction, the theater film FALSCH and the socio-critical melodrama JE PENSE À VOUS. The retrospective allows viewers to set the documentary films in relation to the feature films and retrace the gradual development of the Dardenne’s specific realism, from documentary political activism via their interest in experimental theater to the balanced relationship between formal innovation and social concern that characterizes their successful award-winning movies. Dealing with the possibilities and limits of realism has shaped the works of the Dardennes from the start until today, arriving at novel results.