Belgian film-makers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have long been darlings of the Cannes film festival, with prizes including Palme d’Or wins for Rosetta (1999) and The Child (2005), best screenplay for The Silence of Lorna (2008), a Grand Prix for The Kid With a Bike (2011) and best director honours for Young Ahmed (2019). As for their most recent feature, Tori and Lokita, which once again finds these masters of humanist film-making addressing the plight of young people, it took the special 75th anniversary prize when it premiered at Cannes in May. It’s an extraordinary run of accolades from what remains, for better or worse, the world’s most celebrated film festival – a reminder that over the course of three decades the Dardennes have quietly proved themselves remarkable documenters of the human condition.
Screen newcomers Pablo Schils and Joely Mbundu are utterly engaging as Tori and Lokita, a young boy and a teenage girl from Africa attempting to make a new life in Belgium. We meet Lokita face-on in an interview with an offscreen immigration officer who is sceptical about her claim that Tori is her younger brother. “When my mother died,” Lokita explains hesitantly, “my uncle said it was my brother’s fault; that he still had a sorcerer’s powers and had to be killed. We hid. Then we left.”
