Jean-Pierre Dardenne (born 21 April 1951) and Luc Dardenne (born 10 March 1954) are two Belgian brothers and directors acclaimed for their austere style.
Their work is deeply rooted in social realism, observing the trials and tribulations of the Belgian underclass. As you can imagine, their movies get bleak, although they usually leave at least a little bit of hope for the protagonist at the end.
The Cannes Film Festival absolutely loves these guys. In 1999, the Dardenne brothers won the Palme d'Or for Rosetta, upsetting the predicted winner, All About My Mother. Almost every movie they've made since then has won something at Cannes (the only exceptions being Deux jours, une nuit and The Unknown Girl), and the two won the Palme a second time for L'Enfant in 2005.
Filmography
- La Promesse (1996)
- Rosetta (1999)
- Le Fils (2002)
- L'Enfant (2005)
- Le silence de Lorna (2008)
- The Kid with a Bike (2011)
- Deux jours, une nuit (2014)
- The Unknown Girl (La Fille inconnue) (2016)
- Young Ahmed (Le Jeune Ahmed) (2019)
- Tori and Lokita (Tori et Lokita) (2022)
Tropes
- Bittersweet Ending: They prefer it to the Downer Ending, giving their characters a ray of hope.
- Crapsack World: Contemporary Belgium might be hell on Earth according to them.
- Capitalism Is Bad: Very much so.
- Humans Are Bastards: This doesn't apply to all their films but they managed to make ones without any good characters.
- Parental Abandonment: Many offsprings are in this or that way left by their parents in the films of the brothers.
- Production Posse: Several of their films have Jérémie Renier in their cast.
