The Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, for better or worse, have been the most influential European filmmakers of the 21st century. No doubt about it. Not even close. They have won two Palme d’Ors (“Rosetta ” and “L’Enfant”) using their now heavily imitated brand of intensely realistic, hand-held camera filmmaking. This basically influenced a bunch of film movements in Europe alone, especially the Romanian New-Wave which expanded on the style with uber long-takes. Signs of there being a pushback to the Dardennes happened in 2016 with their drama “The Unknown Girl” which premiered, as with all of their movies, at Cannes but was met with a collective shrug by critics and audiences. Had the Dardennes’ style finally hit a wall with cinephiles? After all, and as mentioned before, it’s been imitated so many times that the powerful effect it once had on us is now all but a cliche of Euro-style filmmaking.
Regardless, they’re going to be going for a third Palme with “Young Ahmed,” a new drama which is set to premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival next month. This, their eleventh feature-length film, is a story about a Belgian teenager who plots to kill his teacher after reading the Quran. A producer revealed last year, that the drama was “the tale of the radicalization of a young boy in Belgium. A strong aspect of the script is the way it opens a debate around the interpretation of the Quran by a young kid under the influence.”
Supposedly, controversy is already hitting the airwaves about the film, which I didn’t know, with The Playlist reporting that “Film Twitter has already been in a fuss about the film with some people pre-condemning the Dardennes for taking on such a potentially reckless subject.”
This should be fun.
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